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HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 



HOME, SCHOOL, AND 
VACATION 

A BOOK OF SUGGESTIONS 



/;-- ^ 



BY 



ANNIE %NSOR) ALLEN 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
1907 



imHARY of CONGRESS I 
iwu Cnules Hsixlvod '( 

OCT 98 «90^ 

Cooyrnrhf Entry | 

J CLASS ^ *Xc., No. 
j COFY li. 



COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY ANNIE WINSOR ALLEN 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published November JQ07 



-Asfe 






CONTENTS 

Parent and Expert 3 

The Nature of Schooling 22 

A General Scheme of Education . . . .39 

A Few Simple Facts 54 

Pedagogic Theories 66 

Home Teaching in Babyhood .... 89 

Good Reading 105 

Discipline 116 

Amusements 160 

Health 200 

A Table of Beginnings 203 

Index 213 



THIS BOOK OWES ITS SUBSTANCE TO INNUMERABLE 
MEN AND WOMEN WHO HAVE SOUGHT IN EVERY AGE 
THE TRUE PURPOSE OF EDUCATION. AMONG SUCH WAS 

JOHN LOVELL 

MASTER OF THE BOSTON LATIN SCHOOL 
1734 to 1775 

TO HIS WISDOM I AM MUCH INDEBTED. SUCH ALSO 

ARE THOSE WHOSE UNTIRING AID HAS GIVEN 

TO THAT PURPOSE THIS PRESENT EXPRESSION. 

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO ALL 

THOSE WHO ARE OF LIKE MIND WITH US. 



If youth he grafted straight and not awry, the whole com- 
monwealth will flourish thereafter. 

Roger Ascham. 



This hook contains nothing novel or original. It 
is merely a collection or codification, as it were, 
setting forth in orderly form the well-estdblished 
commonplaces and essentials of a sound education, 
as they have heen known and practiced in all wise 
communities from the beginning, and as they are 
still practiced in successful homes and schools, — 
homes and schools, that is, which are successful in 
giving the world valuable citizens of more than 
merely natural good sense and efficiency. 

The vocabulary has been chosen solely for conven- 
ience, in order to secure clearness within the covers^ 
and consists merely of ordinary words in their ordi- 
nary significance. A nice nomenclature, exact, sys- 
tematic, and scientific, is impossible to the subject. 
I have attempted only to make my terms comprehen- 
sible and linguistically correct. I trust that they 
are consistently used and adequately defined. 



The book was begun as an assistance to myself, 
to make a clear path before me^ and I hope it may 
help others to see their own way among the dis- 
tracting opportunities of modern educational theory 
and practice. To me we seem just now to be liv- 
ing in a great educational metropolis^ with myr- 
iads of artificial attractions and conveniences but a 
plentiful lack of fresh air and open ground. We 
need to make a clearing promptly, in order that the 
children who are this year too young to go to school 
may come upon kindlier and more wholesome times. 

A. W. A. 
White Plains, July 1, 1907. 



HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 



PARENT AND EXPERT 

Parenthood is not a profession. A pro- 
fession is a means of livelihood, chosen to 
serve some specific secondary need of the 
community. Parenthood is not a means of 
livelihood; it is a primary part of life itself, 
and its duties and preoccupations are not 
chosen; they come like eating and sleeping, 
working and loving, natural necessary parts 
of a full absorbing life. These duties and pre- 
occupations can never be counted and named, 
never be systematized, never be fully fore- 
seen. Therefore it is that parents can never 
be experts. Experts are persons of perpetu- 
ally reiterated experience in some one especial 
matter. The experience of any parent in the 
matter of guiding children is limited to one 
or a dozen in his own family. No one can 
collect statistics and deduce fixed principles 
from such a restricted number of cases. As 
well we might talk of an expert in living. Each 



4 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

of us has but one life and comes a novice to 
every new phase. Real skill cannot be gained 
where experiences never repeat themselves 
and opportunities never come twice alike. 

A sense of this insuperable inexperience 
is what makes most parents stand helpless 
before the array of conflicting expert advice 
which is proffered them to-day on all the 
problems of their children's growth and 
guidance. This is why parents who have 
enough money believe it their duty to employ 
one from each kind of expert skilled in chil- 
dren's affairs. They intend that no amateur 
mistakes shall warp their child's development 
or risk his safety. This is why so many well- 
to-do children are accompanied always by 
some adult, and are definitely taught every- 
thing that it is desired they should learn. Ac- 
quisition of life's processes and protection 
from the experience of life's accidents is hired 
for them by the hour. 

"Why do you have a paid companion for 
your ten-year-old girl ? You never had one 
for yourself," the rich mother is asked ; and 
she answers earnestly, "Because I do not 



PARENT AND EXPERT 6 

dare take any risks that I can avoid. My 
parents could not afford to pay for such pro- 
tection for me. I can afford it for Alice. I 
know that coddling children is bad; but when 
you have the money, where are you going to 
draw the line between mere coddling and 
proper care.^" 

A recently installed tutor for two nice little 
boys of eight and eleven takes them to walk 
in the country. They step evenly along by 
his side until he grows amazed at their in- 
activity. **Why don't you get up and run on 
that stone wall.^" he asks. 

"We've never been taught to do that." 

Two little girls of like age and condition 
spend two months learning to ride the bi- 
cycle, and in the end do not dare even mount 
without their teacher. 

On a balmy day in early spring, when the 
thermometer was at 70°, a sturdy four-year- 
old was brought in to his mother to be kissed. 
He was going out for a walk in his full winter 
toggery, fur coat and hood, gloves and veil. 
He received the kiss and went out. "Did 
n't he seem too warmly dressed.^" said the 



6 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

mGther to a casual caller. "You see I am 
so helpless with these nurses. They know so 
much more than I do." 

For the same cause, an uninitiated mother, 
however wise, who had never herself been 
a teacher, is apt to feel equally helpless be- 
fore the question of schooling for her children. 
She wants to do the best for them, but she is 
not sure what is that best which should be 
done. She hears a deal of advice and many 
opinions. But the opinions differ, and the 
advice generally involves dependence upon 
experts. But what she wants is something 
which shall make her able to judge whether 
that expert's methods are really good. She 
cannot without aversion plan to put her child 
from cradle to college under the elaborated, 
uncorrected judgment of the trained nurse, 
the expert kindergartener, the experienced 
governess, the psychological pedagogue, the 
successful tutor, the famous professor, and 
the leading doctor. She dreads being reduced 
to helplessly loving her own child, — and 
doing nothing more for him. 

She looks for a simpler, pleasanter way. 



PARENT AND EXPERT 7 

a way of common sense, and a way that will 
keep her children's lives within her own cog- 
nizance. She does not like the notion of fol- 
lowing novel, ingenious plans, and of having 
no authority within herself which shall make 
her look unafraid upon an expert, so that she 
can listen with composure to his alarmingly 
well-assorted ideas. Her inner sense of the 
relations of things tells her that somewhere 
a wisdom of parents is to be gained, larger 
and sounder for the children than any out- 
sider's wisdom can ever be. 

She is right. All professional experts are 
outsiders, outside the individual life for which 
they prescribe. A mother is not outside. She 
is part of the individual life. The experts are 
each and all properly zealous and learned in 
their own callings. Unless she is equally zeal- 
ous and wise in her responsibilities, who shall 
save the child from becoming a machine-made 
product, or from being submitted to a pro- 
cess totally unfitted to his individual needs ? 
She and his father are the only people who can 
know what the boy has been in all his stages 
from the beginning, and who can see him in 



S HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

all his occupations. Parents are not profes- 
sionals and they can never be experts; but 
they may have an undistracted, undivided, and 
unflagging interest in their own particular 
child. No one else can have that interest. 

This undivided, personal, totally unprofes- 
sional interest is necessary as a balance for 
the teacher's inevitable tendency to become 
doctrinaire and to mistake conformity for 
growth. No sincere parents need stand help- 
less before an educational expert. It is not 
a parent's part to propose methods in school- 
ing. If he knows clearly the ends which should 
be attained, then the means, the special peda- 
gogic devices, may be trusted to the expert, 
if he be a true expert, not simply a faddist. 
There are very many divergent and equally 
excellent methods of attaining an education. 
Only need it be remembered that no matter 
what advantage, mental, moral, cultural, or 
physical, an educational device may have, its 
use is unjustified if it omits to foster thorough- 
ness and self-reliance. 

Without fail the parent must understand 
the essentials to be reached by the child, and 



PARENT AND EXPERT 9 

must see that they are being pursued. Next 
he must be sure that the teacher has a sound, 
wholesome mind and good common-sense. 
And third, let him insist that the classes shall 
not be too large. Then he need not concern 
himself about Pestalozzi, Herbart, Gruber, 
Froebel, or any of their recent variants. He 
can leave the schoolmasters to fight out those 
things. All he asks is that his child arrive at 
maturity adequately trained. 

But these three points are indispensable; a 
proper size to the classes, a good quality in the 
teacher, and the essentials of adequate training. 

The size of the classes is of imperative im- 
portance. In order to be personally taught, 
a pupil's mind must come into direct commu- 
nication with the teacher's mind. If a class 
of thirty recites to one teacher for thirty min- 
utes, each pupil can receive one minute of 
the teacher's attention (if all general class- 
instruction is excluded). When two minutes 
are given to one pupil's difficulties, then some 
other pupil must go from the class with his 
difficulties untouched. The pupils at the 
antique district school fared better. 



10 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

The quality of the teacher is equally impor- 
tant. A brooding or an impulsive mind is 
charming and has plenty of use in the world; 
but neither is suited for a teacher of children. 
Their teacher must be sound and wholesome. 
Whimsies and sweeping emphatic theories 
are fascinating and valuable, sometimes; but 
a child's teacher must have a clear head, a 
keen common-sense, and a humorous dislike 
of all over-emphasis. 

The essentials of adequate training are 
clear in fact, but easily obscured by talk. 
They are simplicity, thoroughness, and seren- 
ity. These must appear in every part of a 
child's training. 

Neither is the purpose of training hard to 
see. Training exists in order to foster in the 
child self-use and balanced powers, self- 
reliance and efficiency; the first two, mainly 
for his own advantage, the last two chiefly 
for the advantage of his neighbors. In every 
child the training has to act upon 



the muscles 


the memory 


the senses 


the taste 


the will 


the mind 


the desires 


the intellect. 



PARENT AND EXPERT 11 

In order to train these powers it must insist with 

simplicity, thoroughness, and serenity, upon 

physical exercise close attention 

alert observation nice experience 

steady discipline careful classifying 

good example independent judgment. 

The result of good training of good material 
will be 

bodily vigor knowledge 

keen perceptions culture 

self-control logical thought 

right behavior just understanding. 

Bodily vigor,^ keen perceptions, self-con- 
trol, and right behavior, an interested par- 
ent understands in substance, and he is sujQS- 
ciently capable of judging whether a school 
furthers these four first results of a good 
education. Knowledge, likewise, is a simple 
matter, and he is measurably fitted to find 
out whether a child is learning enough at 
school. Culture is more subtle, and its actual 
existence does not become established until 
after the child is past all schooling. Even 
in the making, it is mostly to be gained in 
social intercourse with family and friends, so 
that all that the parent can reasonably ask of 



12 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

a school is that it shall give culture ample op- 
portunity for development. Training in ready 
reasoning and just understanding, on the 
other hand, is exactly what a school is well 
fitted to give, and the parent should expect 
that his child shall have constant exercise in 
school of these most recent powers of man. 
Upon these depends his real efficiency as an 
educated human creature. Bodily vigor, keen 
perceptions, self-control, and right behavior a 
good dog can have. A man may be well-in- 
formed and cultivated without being properly 
efficient; he is commonly enough efficient and 
full of knowledge without possessing culture; 
he can with fair ease be efficient and culti- 
vated without having much knowledge. But 
the well-educated man is all three at once, 
and, of the three, most emphatically efficient. 
We often fail to note the difference be- 
tween culture and efficiency in their relation 
to knowledge. For efficiency it is necessary to 
know thoroughly the skeleton of one subject 
in each branch. For culture it is not necessary 
to have a really thorough knowledge of any 
one subject, but we must understand the out- 



PARENT AND EXPERT 13 

line and character of the principal subjects 
in each branch. To be sure, the more of this 
sort of knowledge we have, the more delight- 
ful it seems; it is delightful to be comfortably 
familiar with many languages, many sciences, 
many handicrafts, and many accomplish- 
ments; but it is not in the least necessary to 
culture, and it is really inimical to efficiency, 
except for very rare minds. A voluminous 
acquisition of entertaining knowledge may 
make pleasures richer and more varied, but 
it is apt to confuse the understanding. 

The judicious parent will feel clearly this 
difference between what is delightful and 
what is necessary. Education in every age, 
and clime, and time, has had the same spe- 
cial aim and the same result. It aims espe- 
cially to train the mind and intellect into full 
efficiency and to develop the will, — to help 
the man to self-use and balanced powers 
ruled by wholesome desires. Hiawatha, Con- 
fucius, or Gladstone had each the complete 
education of his time and clime, and each 
gained the result of education, — efficiency 
and poise. In education, culture, and even 



14 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

knowledge, are secondary to efficiency, since 
culture varies in the same country with the 
varying generations; and as for mere con- 
venient knowledge, that is a matter of imme- 
diate surroundings. Tutored in the common- 
places of London, we are at a loss in Arizona. 
Moreover, culture, and even knowledge, 
can be gained at home; but thorough effi- 
ciency needs the help of a more formal, 
systematic method than home can easily 
supply. Whatever part of education can best 
be aided by formal treatment belongs to 
schooling. Whatever needs a free treatment, 
the school should regard as outside its duty, 
and if it admit, should admit with reluctance. 
To strengthen efficiencies school exists, and to 
that purpose it should adhere, unless forced 
by inadequate homes into doing clumsily 
the work which a good home does well. The 
very poor cannot make good homes. The 
very rich often do not. The ignorant like- 
wise cannot, and the frivolous do not. But 
intelligent, interested, educated parents can 
and do. Such parents, — not exceptionally 
intelligent, professionally interested, or highly 



PARENT AND EXPERT 15 

educated parents only, but all normally de- 
voted parents who can give the time and 
thought, — such parents should watch the 
school narrowly, and guard against its en- 
croachments. For the normal children of 
normal parents in normal circumstances, a 
school should not be a corporate attempt to 
create home atmosphere and home oppor- 
tunities. "All the comforts of home" is just 
what the school was not invented to supply. 
For children and for elders, home is the place 
of adjustment, where Rigid System, Public 
Convenience, and Strict Impartiality, — the 
rulers outside, — yield to personal needs; 
where the father can be comfortably accom- 
modated according to his individual liking, 
and the children be variously treated accord- 
ing to their individual growth and mood and 
health. But school represents Necessity, the 
impartial force of public standards, public ex- 
pectations, and impersonal circumstance. It 
should mean primarily Duty and Justice, — 
not stern justice and pitiless duty, but steady, 
satisfying duty and even-handed justice. It 
should represent impersonal inducements to 



16 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

effort, such as the nature of the case, the in- 
terest of the subject, and the absorbing at- 
traction of doing good work. The teacher 
must not purposely use personal charm as an 
inducement, or personal affection. Persua- 
sive vigor and endearing enthusiasm he must 
have, but they must not be put conspicuously 
in evidence. His chief dependence must be 
a silent confidence in the power and impor- 
tance of beautiful, gracious, mysterious in- 
fluences beyond himself, — the influences of 
order, wisdom, foresight, fidelity, growth, and 
achievement. Personal affection is an indi- 
vidual matter, and belongs to the sphere of 
friendship and home. This is not to say that 
a child should not be fond of his teacher 
and his teacher respond in kind. It is only 
to say that affection must not be used as an 
inducement to work. Schooling means train- 
ing, not persuasion. School is the children's 
training-ground for the outside, inconsiderate 
world that awaits them. They are there to 
have their minds trained, as it cannot be done 
under the looser instigation of home sym- 
pathy and natural inclination. They must 



PARENT AND EXPERT 17 

enjoy their school, but not with a restless, 
excited pleasure. Their enjoyment must be 
of that all-pervasive, deep, strong, permanent 
sort, which is lifting and enlarging. 

Though family life is the normal life for 
every child, and departure from it is to be 
made only for specific insuperable reasons, 
yet the need of a good school is well-nigh 
imperative. Very few parents are capable of 
supplying the steady, progressive drill which 
is necessary for good mental training. Very 
few children can study at all well without 
the stimulus of numbers and necessity. Of 
course, all studies were first the natural in- 
terests of active minds. Then they were ar- 
ranged by their lovers in such shape that 
even persons who are not interested can ac- 
quire a working knowledge of them. And 
school was, originally, a device to expedite 
and make sure the acquisition of all such 
desirable knowledge. Its larger educative 
use is a late discovery. Not before the middle 
of the nineteenth century did most schools 
begin to see their great possibilities in this 
direction. Up to that time, mental training 



18 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

had been only a by-product of schooling, 
though it was even then recognized as the 
school's most important result. Since then 
the power of well-directed training to develop 
the average mind has been well established. 
Even for a genius, a good school nowadays 
is not merely an opportunity; it is a regulator. 
For the average mind it is a stimulus. For 
the slow mind it is a necessity. But it should 
be a good school: it must be simple, serene, 
and thorough ; and it must not fritter away its 
function by trying to be the only educational 
factor in life. 

Since the epoch-making Centennial Ex- 
hibition at Philadelphia, in 1876, pedagogues 
have been so magnifying their office as to 
bring us to a general impression that edu- 
cation and schooling are synonymous. As 
soon as we discover something to be educa- 
tive which is not in the school curriculum, 
we promptly ask to have it included there. 
Whereas, since schooling is merely the formal 
part of education, we should rather ask of 
each school-subject why it is already there, 
whether it does not duplicate the training of 



PARENT AND EXPERT 19 

some other subject, whether it ^cannot be 
better handled at home, whether it might 
not just as well be left to be '* picked up," 
or why home is unable or unwilling to teach 
it. This setting apart of so many interests 
and making them school studies, is giving an 
acquired air to all our knowledge. Instead 
of coming, we know not just how, and grow- 
ing into our culture, knowledge is put on 
consciously at school. This makes us think 
of it apart from our personal selves. Our 
culture smacks of the factory. It sits ill on 
us, like contract-made clothes. We apolo- 
gize for knowing things, and seem when we 
mention a printed fact to be reciting a lesson. 
The newspaper and the magazine are the 
only literature that we quote without self- 
consciousness. And now, even the news- 
paper and the magazine are being "taught" 
in school. 

This elaborate systematic teaching, step by 
step, of all skill and every separate procedure, 
gives us likewise an impression that no one 
can do what he has not been taught. We 
are not suflSciently self-dependent. We fancy 



20 HOME, SCHOOL AND VACATION 

that there is something compUcated and re- 
condite about cooking a dinner or harnessing 
a horse. We suppose it to be necessary to go 
through a course before we can understand 
anything. This impression we get from the 
self-important solemnity of school systems 
and butlers. 

As a consequence, too, of this over-growth 
in self-importance, the school is eager to as- 
sume the whole control of education and to 
leave the parent nothing to do for the child. 
At best the typical modern school asks the 
parent [to cooperate. Yet parents who have 
the desire but not the opportunity to discover 
and practice for themselves what is sound 
and large in education, should properly find 
the school willingly at their service. In a 
truly wholesome order, the home would 
create and use the school. 

Perhaps the present reversed state of things 
really springs from indifference and igno- 
rance in the parents. In that case it is time 
that the schools ceased to encourage such 
indijfference, and time the parents overcame 
their ignorance. The task of actually doing 



PARENT AND EXPERT 21 

away with the indifference will be hard of 
accomplishment; but to cure the ignorance is 
scarcely a diflScult matter. A sensible opinion 
about schooling is not beyond the reach of 
ordinarily intelligent, interested persons, even 
though they know nothing of practical teach- 
ing. It is possible to possess a complete edu- 
cational scheme, simple and flexible enough 
to give room for individual varieties of taste 
and emphasis, yet firmly based upon good 
sense and permanent necessities. 

Such a scheme follows the natural order 
of a child's development, and loses for him 
as few as possible of the speeding weeks while 
he is in tutelage. With such a plan, careful 
parents can take an intelligent stand against 
an opinionated school-teacher, refusing to 
have their natural privileges stolen and the 
avenues to their children's companionship 
taken out of their possession, and protesting 
against allowing the whole of learning to be 
made conscious. 



THE NATURE OF SCHOOLING 

A. MOTHER thinks of her child's life, while it 
is under her charge, as divided into rapidly 
merging strata like the rainbow, each band 
of years well defined at its centre and shad- 
ing off at beginning and end into an adjoin- 
ing band. First there is infancy, stretching 
from birth to the time when the child can 
no longer be carried about. Then babyhood, 
from the first self-confidence until he can be 
trusted alone on errands and visits. Next, 
childhood, from the time when he loses his 
baby roundness until he begins in earnest 
really to assert his personal independence. 
Then boyhood, from the beginning of his teens 
till his beard starts to grow. And then, at last, 
the few precious years of immaturity before 
she is to yield him full charge of his own life. 
She thinks of school as merely one inci- 
dent of this manifold rainbow interest. To 
her, school is a convenience which makes its 



THE NATURE OF SCHOOLING 23 

appearance just when the child's mind begins 
to need more constant attention, perhaps, than 
the people at home have time or inclination 
to give it. She has recourse to the school 
simply that the more formal parts of his edu- 
cation may be accomplished thoroughly and 
systematically. Or she sends him to school 
because she does not know what else to do 
with him. 

If the school, in like fashion, regarded all 
of the child's life as within its own province, 
it would put him systematically into classes, 
and would know exactly what he was to ac- 
complish in each year. Instead of being in- 
definitely divided into stages, his life would 
be succinctly tabulated somewhat in the fol- 
lowing manner: — 



SCHOOL 


PERIOD DURATION 


AGE Am> CLASS 


Nursery 


Infancy 3 years 


0, 1, 2 


Kindergarten 


Babyhood 4 years 


3, 4, 5, 6, 


Primary 


Preadolescence 7 years 


7, 8. 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 


Secondary 


Adolescence 4 years 


14, 15, 16, 17 


CoUege 


Immaturity 4 years 


18, 19, 20, 21 



A mother's natural way of viewing the mat- 
ter is too vague to be useful to her; the other 
way is too impersonal. But some orderly 



24 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

way of dividing and tabulating may to great 
advantage be adopted by the mother in con- 
sidering what is owing to a child year by 
year, and what at each stage he should have 
accomplished; it is even well to think of 
schooling itself as beginning with the baby's 
first breaths. To do its best work for a child, 
schooling must be planned as part of the gen- 
eral scheme of his education; though educa- 
tion must not, conversely, be regarded as all 
a strict schooling. And everywhere, in all 
stages, at home and at school, education must 
be dominated by simplicity, thoroughness, and 
serenity. 

The teachers of infancy are the mother 
and the nurse, aided in the case of lucky in- 
fants by the father and the other children. It 
is a time of no definite tasks, when the new 
mind is learning what it can without con- 
scious effort, and when it must be given fit 
experiences to learn from. 

With babyhood, duties begin and gradu- 
ally multiply, and the rudiments of all ac- 



THE NATURE OF SCHOOLING 25 

complishments are learned. Perhaps a pleas- 
ant friend is added to the natural teachers, 
who appears in some homelike room for a 
part of every morning, and has school with 
the children and with some of their familiar 
friends. While they are little and simple, 
chey can learn the little and simple parts of 
everything, so that when they are larger and 
more complicated, they need not be belittled 
and bored by little simple things, but may 
be ready equipped for getting larger, more 
complicated knowledge. And, likewise, before 
they grow conscious of themselves as com- 
pared to others, before they learn to be dis- 
couraged by the glaring discrepancy between 
their performance and their model, they 
should be allowed to try their hands at many 
things. Thus they gain a manipulation of 
material, and a familiarity with its feel and 
character. A little child has no standards of 
perfection, and needs none. Unoppressed by 
the distant ideal, he may begin the piano, 
writing, drawing, painting, cooking, sewing, 
French, German, geography, botany, dancing, 
— everything; and incidentally he will be gain- 



26 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

ing an unconscious, rudimentary sense of the 
unity of knowledge. 

It is best not to launch such small children 
in a large school if one can help it, nor even, 
at the very first, in any school at all. All 
the beginning can best be done at home, in the 
simple, familiar surroundings, as part of the 
unpremeditated inevitable course of natural 
life. Probably the ideal way for children of 
five or six is to be taught in little groups 
of from four to a dozen. To these little, pri- 
vate, personal, uncomprehending creatures, 
the world should seem little and private, very 
personal and matter-of-course. 

When childhood sets in, there come natural 
exactions, — the need of sterner compulsion 
than home can offer, the capacity for more 
difficult companionship than that of intimate 
friends, and the mental demand for a larger 
size to the known world. Yet their under- 
standings are still extremely simple. They 
ought still to live in a world unperplexed by 
complex considerations. In every possible way 
children under thirteen should live so that 



THE NATURE OF SCHOOLING 27 

the few simple truths of morals, conduct, and 
right thinking are brought undisguised to 
their understanding, over and over. So in 
the primary school, things are to be merely 
less familiar than at home, more formal. 
There are other children about, who are not 
intimates, and the teacher is not simply a 
family friend. 

Here begin definite study and entirely in- 
dependent work. For it is a poor practice to 
supply children with many teachers and to 
keep them at work almost all their school 
time being taught. Half the time they should 
be working by themselves, free from the pres- 
sure of a superior intelligence. Fortunately, 
the subjects actually to be taught in these 
lower schools are such that intelligence, ex- 
perience, natural fitness, and general culture 
are all they demand from a teacher; conse- 
sequently the teachers for each child can be 
few, and the total number of pupils should 
be so likewise. It is certainly not the best 
possible arrangement for primary school chil- 
dren to be in a really large school. 

In appointment, let the primary school aim 



28 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

at simplicity, and disregard the many elabo- 
rations which . are counseled by the strong 
American desire for entirely irrelevant per- 
fections. The perfection at which to aim for 
childhood is the perfection of simplicity, — 
simplicity in curriculum and appointments, 
and simplicity in effect. Many schools miss 
this simplicity of effect in the complexity 
of their effort and the elaborateness of their 
"plant." They give their inexperienced pupils 
the impression that there is no end to the 
necessary things, and that there is no differ- 
ence of importance between good ventila- 
tion and polychromatic photographs. They 
provide an especial appliance for each sepa- 
rate thing that is to be done, instead of using 
the smallest possible number of implements 
and methods, in order to draw attention to 
essentials. This mistake is characteristic of 
our age. We are sadly without a sense of 
proportion; we make no sturdy insistence on 
relative values. And so we are easily and 
pathetically misled by the eager thoroughness 
of specialists, forgetting that perennially the 
"official doth magnify his office." For in- 



THE NATURE OF SCHOOLING 29 

stance, technical training of any sort is not 
really necessary to a sound liberal education; 
it is often a hindrance to it. The liberally 
educated mind can quickly acquire, at need, 
any desired technicalities. So the specialists 
are mistaken in supposing that subjects 
which involve elaborate outlay and para- 
phernalia are necessary to real education, or 
that such of them as are wished for younger 
children cannot be learned at home without 
the encumbrance of elaborate graded methods. 
If we try to make a child a perfect manu- 
factured article, through perfect grading and 
perpetual instruction, we shall do it at the 
expense of his imagination, his spontaneity, 
and his personal initiative. The school which 
is to supplement a good home should teach 
only those things which need competition 
and numbers to be learned successfully, and 
those things which can be taught only by an 
expert who is too expensive for individual 
use. 

As to methods of teaching, pedagogy and 
psychology are helpless to prescribe for the 
infinite variety of human type and human 



30 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

opportunity. One teacher teaches best in one 
way, another in another. One child needs slow 
approach ; another apprehends quickly. Logi- 
cal systems are subtle snares of the tempter, 
and formal teaching itself is often out of 
place. Hints are often sufficient. Most of 
the things we know we have heard but once. 
Many things sink in without drill, and the 
mind "worketh while sleeping." Not all 
knowledge can be produced in recitation 
and made visible or audible, neither is all 
skill to be learned by practice. Much of the 
best skill is gained by passive watching. Per- 
fection comes but slowly, and to look for even 
final completeness is, of course, ridiculous. 
Saliency is the important matter. Therefore 
teaching is to be judged, not by method, but 
by the condition of mind that it produces in 
the pupil. If it produces wholesome eagerness, 
independence, accuracy, and intellectual mod- 
esty, it is good teaching. If it produces apathy 
or nervousness, mental attitudinizing and 
affectation, thoughtless repetition, servility of 
any sort, carelessness or bumptiousness, it is 
bad teaching. 



THE NATURE OF SCHOOLING 31 

In regard to subjects, the primary school 
will give most of its time to the obvious things. 
Good primary education supplies in every 
department of external life the mere ele- 
mentary and innocent, wholesome facts and 
methods. It touches on many subjects, but 
in none should it go below the surface, or let 
the children's minds feel puzzled or harassed. 
Throughout childhood the principal mental 
capacity is for reproduction, for memorizing, 
and other kinds of imitation. Children love 
disconnected facts, and do not apprehend the 
significance of more than the simplest rela- 
tions of cause and effect. Their intellects, 
being the latest of human acquisitions, de- 
velop later. So childhood is the time for 
storing up facts of all sorts, for gathering the 
material of future thought, and for training 
memory and attention. Consequently most 
of the tasks in a primary school can and 
should be such that perfection is imaginable 
by almost every scholar. The amount of ex- 
act knowledge necessary is very slight; the 
exactness and the training are all-important. 
Very few subjects should be studied^ and of 



32 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

those subjects only the simplest portions. The 
school demands should be simple, unpreten- 
tious, unstruggling, and healthy, so that home 
joys and home purposes will not be swamped 
by a pervasive, insistent flow of school interests 
and school duties; and so that the children's 
minds will remain free and buoyant. 

The interest in school work should be 
steady and quiet. This is the normal, health- 
ful way to work, without using excited energy. 
It is as near as possible to the sort of interest 
that children have when they are playing by 
themselves. Perhaps children whose percep- 
tions are dull, need to be roused by stimulating 
methods. But children of intelligent parents 
are apt to be keenly alive in all their five senses. 
The mere using of their powers is a pleasure. 
The subject and an opportunity to accomplish 
something are stimulus enough for them. For 
this sort of child, the added excitement of a 
teacher's superimposed personality and simu- 
lated suspense is nervously injurious. For him 
there is no need of trying hard to make school 
pleasant. There is much more need of mak- 
ing it serious, and giving him a habit of hard. 



THE NATURE OF SCHOOLING 33 

steady work. For him life is already suf- 
ficiently pleasant; and he does not need to 
be taught most things laboriously. Interests 
crowd upon him. 

Moreover, a habit of having always some 
outside stimulus to urge it on to work, is bad 
for the mind's self-dependence. A teacher 
should teach a child how to learn, not teach 
him his lessons. The child should learn his 
own lessons, and the lessons should be within 
his capacity for that kind of learning. So work 
in a primary school should be done in a steady, 
thorough, interested kind of way, quiet and 
pleasant, and coming as a matter of course, 
like eating breakfast and going to bed. There 
should be reports to the home, but no rank- 
ing marks for the children's delectation, ex- 
hilaration, depression, and jealousy; no prizes, 
no sharp comparisons of any sort of child 
with child. Comparisons belong to later life, 
when the basis of just comparison can be 
understood and the power of comparison 
is developed. Children should not be made 
conscious and critical of themselves or of 
their neighbors. They should work together 



34 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

in a spirit of mutual good-will. Competition, 
emulation, a wish to be foremost, are natural 
and necessary; but they are not first-rate mo- 
tives. In school, by virtue of the presence of 
others, they will always be healthily at work. 
They need not be fostered, and the only 
motives that a teacher of children should 
appeal to openly are the ones she most re- 
spects, — the desire to do things as well as 
you possibly can, and the desire to gain what 
you have seen to be good. Above all things, 
work must be earnest, sober, and important. 

At the outset of youth, life suddenly crowds 
and lengthens. This experience is universal. 
Looking back from maturity at our youthful 
selves, we seem to see long spaces between 
the happy child of twelve and the searching 
young creature of fifteen. There is not more 
difference between the babe of six months 
and the child of three years. Therefore, here 
may well come a break in all school sur- 
roundings, and a year of easy work with 
plenty of out-door exercise; a change in the 
spirit and method of the teaching, and even to 



THE NATURE OF SCHOOLING 35 

some extent in the personnel of companions. 
It is now that Hfe becomes compHcated, led 
by ideals impossible of fulfillment, redolent of 
questions and arguments, suggestive of com- 
parisons, difficult. School should change in 
like manner. A variety of teachers, a large 
company, a voluminous aspect in the studies, 
an aim beyond perfection, these should re- 
place the clarity and self-completeness of the 
earlier school. 

In appointments and subjects, the second- 
ary school is necessarily and desirably com- 
plex. The youthful mind is full of new powers 
and new kinds of interests. It needs to be 
fed from a full manger. As to methods of 
teaching, stimuli of various sorts are suitable 
enough and competition to a mild degree is 
not out of place. But the desire to do things 
as well as you can, must grow even stronger 
as the standard of performance rises. And 
the desire to gain what you have seen to be 
good must grow wiser, more independent, 
and more unselfish. To them must be added 
love of abstract truth, love of knowledge for 
its own sake, understanding of the relations 



36 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

of things and of the reasons for things, a joy- 
in hard work. The youth must learn to know 
himself. He must accept and use his natural 
place among his fellows; not pluming him- 
self upon his talents nor blinding himself to 
his weak points, nor being out of patience 
with his stupidities, but looking upon his 
powers as tools to be put to the best use he 
can find for them. All this can be fostered at 
school, but the home expectation is what aids 
him most. 

Youth needs college, or if not college, then 
something equally worth while, equally com- 
plex and equally enlarging, something which 
will establish independence and enrich the 
mind by daily contact with the process of 
careful thinking. Colleges are foolish, it is 
true. But so is society, and so is business. 
Each is an inadequate device for the educa- 
tional purpose. But college has the deeper 
purpose, and is a more thoughtful and care- 
fully contrived device. 

Whatever a boy or girl does from eighteen 
years old to twenty-two, should be considered 
and managed as still a part of life's prepara- 



THE NATURE OF SCHOOLING 37 

tion. We human creatures have the privilege 
of prolonged infancy, and those of us who are 
not in the clutch of financial necessity may 
seize the full advantage of that probation for 
their children. This is something that they 
owe to themselves and to humanity. Unless 
those who are able, develop their children 
to the greatest advance they can reach, the 
whole race is retarded in its upward climb. 
Nothing has so hindered it in the past as the 
self-satisfied lagging of the vanguard group. 

We are too apt to rest content if our chil- 
dren are as well developed as ourselves, and 
often we do not make the personal exertion 
necessary to secure even that. Of course, 
if we are satisfactory to ourselves and com- 
pletely useful to other people, we may save 
ourselves the bother of puzzling over educa- 
tion : we need only reproduce for our children 
what we went through ourselves. If most of 
our friends are well-rounded and thoroughly 
valuable persons, so that we know that they 
have reached the fruitful use of every power 
they have, then we may feel satisfied that 



38 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

the educated classes are doing their full duty 
toward their own individuals and toward their 
numberless fellows scrambling up behind 
them. But we know very well, each searching 
his own self and his acquaintance, that barely 
a person can be found who is able to do full 
justice to himself. Every one might be more 
satisfactory than he is, might easily be so. 
There is no one who would not have been bet- 
ter and happier for some wiser treatment in one 
respect or another while he was in tutelage. 

It the more concerns us to use all possible 
devices for preventing omissions in our chil- 
dren's education, and to see to it that their 
schooling at every stage supplements a wise 
home training and a rich home opportunity. 
The home training must be controlled by 
justice, sympathy, and a high standard of 
performance, debarring rigidity, indulgence, 
and good-enough-will-do. The home oppor- 
tunity must give ample room for personal 
tastes, spontaneous activity, genuine enthu- 
siasms, and unhampered experiments. Not 
a month must be unheeded. The child will 
never come to that age again. 



A GENERAL SCHEME OF 
EDUCATION 

To-day, if an average man is to feel thor* 
oughly at home in his environment and com- 
prehend the world in which his work must 
be done, he needs the greatest possible va- 
riety of conversance with human knowledge 
and skill, and his own powers must be well 
at his own command. The whole period of 
tutelage is not too long to equip him satis- 
factorily. Therefore the ingenuity of home 
and school must be combined to use all of his 
first twenty-one years economically and fruit- 
fully for him, so that he will be equal to the 
situation when he arrives. 

Such being the state of things, a compre- 
hensive outline of elementary learning is 
valuable at home and at school. At home it 
guards against omissions and time-wasting. 
At school it helps keep the effort modest and 
thorough. Its suggestions should include not 



40 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

only the usual stock studies, but also all those 
less academic things which are best fitted not 
to be taught in school but to be absorbed 
as home interests. Such a catalogue has un- 
avoidably the ridiculous look of a complete 
guide to omniscience, covering "All Educa- 
tion FROM Cradle to College." But con- 
sidered soberly it is merely a sketch, not a 
rigid arrangement; it is a useful outline of 
all sorts of things that are desirable to teach 
and to learn. The one given at the end of 
this book aims to arrange the subjects in a 
sensible order, so that they can be comfortably 
and healthfully assimilated, taking into ac- 
count the usual abilities and limitations of 
each age, and emphasizing always what is 
salient. Each subject is inserted at the point 
where a healthy average child may well be 
introduced to it. If he shows no capacity to 
comprehend it then, it may be postponed, but 
not omitted. If he shows a capacity very much 
earlier, well and good; let him begin earlier, 
— if he is thoroughly healthy. For various 
reasons of convenience, also, the order may 
perfectly well be altered. The only purpose 



A GENERAL SCHEME OF EDUCATION 41 

of the list is to mention everything, at a sea- 
sonable moment, and to allow time enough for 
an adequate acquaintance with each. It does 
not intend, either, to put a terminal limit to 
acquaintance with any subject; once taken 
up, nothing is wholly dropped. A subject still 
continues as an interest after it has ceased 
to be a study. In this list school work goes 
side by side with home work, and vacation 
time is given plenty of occupation. Any 
parent who consults the plan will find a sug- 
gestion, not a direction, about what to do 
with a child's mind at any age, and about 
how to reduce to a proper minimum the 
formal teaching in a sound education. 

It is important to emphasize the fact that 
no one plan of education can suit equally any 
two children. Differences in talents, taste, 
and temperament, and accidents in outside 
opportunity, often make the needs different 
even for brothers close in age. Illness, lack 
of proper exercise, too rich food, second 
teeth, over-stimulation, over-study, or insuflfi- 
cient work, added to natural peculiarities of 
make-up which are part of a child's charac- 



42 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

ter, all help to vary development and to make 
each child a separate problem. A mother 
must be plastic, constantly ready to change 
special plans according to circumstances. 
Talents must be fostered, — even small fleet- 
ing or superficial talents, — for it is through 
the unfolding of talents that each human 
creature gains self-confidence and strong 
enthusiasm. Tastes must be gratified, en- 
larged, and supplemented, for it is through 
our tastes that grace and charm come into 
life. Temperament must be used, modified, 
and reinforced, for temperament is the con- 
trolling factor in every life, the unchangeable 
centre round which character is built. The 
watchful mother's safeguard against foolish 
variety is in having a firmly fixed compre- 
hension of the final purpose, — self -use and 
balanced powers, ruled by wholesome desires. 
This catalogue takes for granted that a 
child's brain is as much a part of his body 
as is any other organ, and that his natural 
exercise of it can no more be surely trusted 
to give it good development than his other 
natural exercises can be trusted, undirected. 



A GENERAL SCHEME OF EDUCATION 43 

with the proper strengthening of the rest of his 
body. Likewise, to leave even a little child's 
mind without food or furnishings is to leave 
it without strength or comfort; and then his 
mind grows without shape and with no habits, 
only desultory inclinations. Consequently his 
formal acquisition of useful knowledge should 
generally begin before he is six years old. Sev- 
eral years of time can thus be saved at the 
beginning of life which have generally, these 
last thirty years, been allowed to go to semi- 
waste. It is possible to fill young minds so 
full of material and interest and simple skill 
that after life will not be puzzling, and in 
whatever estate they later find service they 
will be adequate and free. 

By the same principle the catalogue takes 
for granted that mental inactivity during 
fourteen long summer vacations is not salu- 
tary. Fourteen long summer vacations are 
the equivalent of almost five years. The 
scheme does not propose the apportioning of 
every hour in every vacation day to some 
allotted task. It merely urges the duty of 
experience toward inexperience, and warns 



44 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

us not to let the child's mental energies be 
softened by mere repetition of familiar occu- 
pations and effortless acts, or even by the 
novel or vigorous pleasures of any merely 
physical and emotional experiences. That is 
sending the child to a school of mental va- 
grancy, and is as unjust as is driving him 
to restlessness by over-stimulation. It is true 
that time for germination and fructification 
is needed; time for the growing, eager mind 
to invent for itself joys and pastimes, prob- 
lems and purposes of its own, — plenty of 
time, in summer and winter. But there must 
not be so much of such time given that the 
mind never gains any new material with which 
to experiment or any new vigor with which to 
think. One of the most serious reasons for 
giving children tasks and urging them to 
difficult undertakings is that they may surely 
learn what longing is. The desire for what 
is high and far away, — this is the heart of 
life. The desire to attain, the courage to 
strive, the wisdom to desire and dare well, — 
these are what we want for our children. 
In consequence of failure to recognize the 



A GENERAL SCHEME OF EDUCATION 45 

principle that every mind needs steady regular 
exercise adequate to its powers, the weakest 
part of our educational methods to-day is in 
the first twelve years. Everywhere through 
this country, in both private and public 
schools, and even more flagrantly at home, 
so much time is wasted that the growth ac- 
complished in these years is cut down to less 
than half of what it should be, and the sec- 
ondary school above becomes a place of close 
pressed haste to make up for such wholesale 
losses. To go into the entire matter and pre- 
sent a reasoned proof of this condition and 
its causes, and then to give an elaborate 
exposition of a sounder policy and a better 
method, would pass the scope of a thousand 
pages. Any one who is interested need only 
consult all the best teachers of his acquaint- 
ance, — not the psychologists, pedagogists, 
superintendents, and merely directing prin- 
cipals, but the teachers who are trying to do 
the actual teaching. Suflace it to offer here 
the following convictions and a clear scheme 
based thereon. 



46 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

UNDERLYING CONVICTIONS 

Systems of education which are logically 
reasoned out from a few fixed premises 
necessarily omit a multitude of important 
matters, and over-emphasize details of per- 
fection, for it is the nature of logic to be 
exclusive of all facts outside the assumed pre- 
mises, and exhaustive of all within. Educa- 
tion, therefore, cannot be logically systematic. 
It must be regulated by ordinary common- 
sense, balancing one consideration of experi- 
ence against another. 

Schooling exists to provide mental training 
by orderly procedure. It must train the child 
to steady work, continuous thought, voluntary 
application, and independent decision. No 
methods which omit or weaken such training 
are good methods. 

The sincere use of words, whether in study- 
ing from books or in expressing one's thoughts, 
is a more exacting and a more thorough 
mental education than any other occupa- 
tion can be, for it demands an unlapsing 
attention and uses all functions of the mind 



A GENERAL SCHEME OF EDUCATION 47 

at once, the later as well as the earlier 
powers. 

Complete knowledge and the complete 
understanding of any subject are impossible 
even to an adult. For educational purposes 
we must choose the salient, established, sim- 
ple parts of each subject and let the rest go. 

The power of the mind is injured by being 
left for seven years without learning volun- 
tary concentration. And it is a grave mistake 
to make no provision for regular mental exer- 
cise during fourteen long summer vacations. 

Each sort of knowledge should be encoun- 
tered three times before full freedom of choice 
and treatment is reached: — 

in Babyhood, to grow familiar with the general nature 
of the material; 

in Childhood, to learn the skeleton and general ar- 
rangement of the subject; 

in Youth, to learn the history and general theory of 
the subject, and its large relations to life. 

After that, the details may be mastered to 
any desired extent. 

By meeting halfway the eager, natural 
curiosity of a child between three and seven 



48 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

years old, much of the early drudgery of 
school studies can be agreeably forestalled 
and the nervous crowding of later school 
work prevented. 

During primary and secondary education 
the various kinds of human knowledge and 
interest must become familiar to the con- 
sciousness in their healthful aspects, omitting 
what is perplexing, morbid, bare, or patho- 
logical in any way. But only the few indis- 
pensable subjects must be mastered {e. g., 
spelling), or even taught in such a way as to 
suggest mastery. Some few others must be 
mastered in their elements only (e.g., physics). 
Still other few must be learned briefly and in 
skeleton {e. gr., history). The vast majority of 
facts must be mentioned, not taught; opened 
to the consciousness, not made a part of re- 
quired study. Most of them should be met 
at home, not at school. 

Home and vacation interests and occupa- 
tions should run parallel to school work, and 
supplement it. 

So little work should be required at the 
upper end of the primary school that a child 



A GENERAL SCHEME OF EDUCATION 49 

could then have one easy year, with an extra 
amount of outdoor time. 

RESULTS 

Followed by parent and school, these con- 
victions may have the following results : — 

Before the approximate age of seven years, 
children may learn — 

to read and write childish English easily, and to repeat 

verses; 
to count, and to do simple sums both oral and written 

in numbers less than 100, and to tell time; 
to repeat some verses in French and German and to 

count in each language, also to name the days of 

the week and the months in each; 
to tell childish stories of famous children, etc.; 
to understand the globe and the map of the world, etc., 

points of the compass; 
to know the names of common birds, flowers, trees, 

and insects, and the parts of a flower, etc. ; 
to sing by note, following the hand, and to sing the 

scale, etc., to play little pieces; 
to paste, cut, sew cards, sew cloth, weave paper, etc., 

fold and cut paper, trace, color drawings with 

water color, etc., and to dance, march, etc., and 

to know right from left; 
to be familiar with very much first-rate prose and 

verse. 



50 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

Between the approximate ages of seven 
and THIRTEEN, they may learn — 

to read fluently and intelligently any book whose sub- 
ject-matter is sufficiently comprehensible to them; 

to understand the simple terms and relations of gram- 
mar; 

to write correctly and naturally on any subject that 
interests them; 

to spell; 

to do arithmetic, oral and written, through compound 
numbers, but only for simple problems; 

to do inventional geometry, and algebra through 
quadratics, but these also only in very simple 
forms; 

to read simple French with ease (after seven years' 
lessons), and to speak it simply, without embar- 
rassment; 

to do the same with German, so far as two years less 
study make that possible; 

to read and write simple Latin; 

to know the skeleton outlines of English, American, 
Ancient, Grecian, and Roman history, and general 
modern history to the Renaissance; 

to be familiar with the use of maps, and with simple 
modern geography (commercial, political, and 
physical), as well as with ancient; 

to feel at ease in the mere elementary facts and terms 
of botany, physiology, zoology, simple physics and 
chemistry, physical geography, astronomy, and 
geology; 



A GENERAL SCHEME OF EDUCATION 51 

to sing songs in parts (by dint of a singing lesson every 
school day); 

to model a little, to draw in outline and in flat color, 
and to design patterns, also to carve a trifle per- 
haps, and to drive a nail, etc.; 

to do healthful calisthenics with the precision of daily 
practice. 

Between the approximate ages of thir- 
teen and EIGHTEEN, all the usual work may 
be done, except what has been anticipated, 
and there is time for several unusual studies. 

These results are attained by simplifying 
the material in each subject, by condensing 
the method, and by saying many things only 
once. The home is a large factor in these 
results. The school alone cannot accomplish 
them. 

DISTRIBUTION OF TIME 

This work can actually be distributed and 
accomplished without study at home until the 
age of eleven, and then with not more than 
an hour or so a week up to fourteen or fif- 
teen, leaving plenty of leisure of mind for 
every one concerned, as well as ample time for 



52 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

outdoor games and exercise, and for home 
pleasures and duties. 

To accomplish this, children will need to 
be schooled — 



at 4 years 
at 5-6 years 
at 7 years 
at 8 years 
at 9-10 years 
at 11-18 years 



for ^ hour daily; 
for 1 hour daily; 
for 2 hours daily; 
for 3 hours daily; 
for 3 J hours daily; 
for 4 hours daily. 



Of course, for the younger children, as 
much more time in school could be arranged 
for as seemed desirable in special cases, by 
providing occupations of various sorts; but 
this is all that is necessary. 

The various studies would fall in, some- 
what after this fashion: — 



To come every day 

reading aloud and listen- 
ing 
reading silently 
writing and composition 
mathematics 



To come two or three days a week 
for an indefinite period 

history 

geography 
later science 
later languages 



A GENERAL SCHEME OF EDUCATION 53 

To come every day for To come one day a week for an 

three years indefinite period 

beginning French memorizing literature 

beginning German speaking or acting literature 

beginning Latin 
beginning Greek 

OCCUPATIONS 

To come every day for To come two days a week for an 

eighteen years indefinite period 

music early science 

exercise art information 

handwork 

In fact, there is no reason why the extraor- 
dinary enlargement of the intellectual field 
brought upon us during the past fifty years 
should make of education either a distressful 
scramble or a bewildered smattering. By sim- 
plification, calmness, and foresight the chil- 
dren can be given a modern liberal education 
without strain and without shallowness. 



A FEW SIMPLE FACTS 

The few principles here set down are chosen 
only because of their practical usefulness. 
They do not cover the whole ground, nor 
have they any systematic relation to one an- 
other. They briefly treat the questions which 
most often come up in the course of practical 
education. 

Manner is All Important. It is the 
manner of learning, not the material or even 
the method, that produces a sound educa- 
tion. 

(a) Manner, not Matter. It is the manner, 
not the material of learning, that is essential. 
All the schools of any one country teach 
substantially the same subjects simply for 
convenience. The Japanese for thousands 
of years based education on material which 
seems to us preposterous. In their little iso- 
lated island there were not enough large things 
to work upon, so they trained their minds 



A FEW SIMPLE FACTS 55 

upon small matters, — elaborate punctilio of 
ceremony, infinite nicety of detail, countless 
steps and ramifications of procedure in every 
art, always and everywhere a multiplication 
of needless rules. But when their minds, 
trained by such exacting education, met the 
material of Western life, they grasped, handled, 
and managed it with a masterly perfection 
that amazed the Westerner, accustomed to> 
more large and careless mental motions, and 
hitherto impatient of being precise and par- 
ticular. 

(6) Manner, not Method. It is the manner, 
not the method of learning, that produces a 
sound education. Entirely well-educated per- 
sons may be produced by any one of a hun- 
dred current methods and pedagogic theo- 
ries; but no well-educated person can be 
produced by any method whatever, unless in 
the course of it, and all through the course of 
it, his mental powers are steadily, adequately, 
and equally exercised. We take thought 
over which method we shall choose for our 
children's schooling, not because one method 
educates and the others do not, but because 



56 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

one method has certain valuable attendant 
consequences and another has others. At 
public schools the children get democratic 
experience. At private schools they get de- 
sirable friends, perhaps. At home they get 
personal attention, and hear nothing of which 
their parents wish them to be ignorant. So, 
too, special methods of actual teaching are 
chosen, usually for reasons outside pure edu- 
cation. One method gives quicker results, 
one gives wider range of knowledge, one is 
adapted to large classes, etc. But in all these 
places and all these ways the children can 
get a sound education if they have a good 
teacher. 

Schooling should deal primarily with 
Mental Powers. Primarily, school is to 
train the mental powers; culture and morals 
are only attendant possibilities of mental 
education. Of course, the less the home 
does for culture and morals, the more the 
school is tempted to do for them. And 
of course, in the capacity of friend, the 
teacher is constantly and necessarily an 
important factor in both culture and mor- 



A FEW SIMPLE FACTS 57 

als. But school must aim first at mental 
training. 

The mental powers are memory, will, 
mind, and intellect/ Training them increases 
the capacity for 



accuracy 


independence 


attention 


initiative 


comparison 


judgment 


concentration (voluntary 


observation 


and acquired) 


orderliness 


discrimination 


promptness 


expression, power of 


recording, accuracy in 


foresight 


self-control 


imagination (reproduc- 


sense of proportion 


tive, constructive, and 


seriousness toward work 


creative) 


and their like. 



These capacities gain strength by exercise 
upon no matter what material and by no mat- 
ter what method. 

Desire is not a Mental Power. Mem- 
ory, will, mind, and intellect are mental 
powers; desire is not. 

Memory is the storehouse for material. Its use is in 
record, imitation, and reproductive imagination. 

Will is the force which causes voluntary action. Its 

exercise brings about attention, concentration, expres- 

* Here and in the next section the category is one of convenience, 
not of science. 



^8 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

sion, initiative, independence, observation, promptness, 
and self-control. 

Mind is the capacity for sorting, classifying, general- 
izing, and reasoning logically, i. e., deductively. It is 
the power to see likeness and difference, the power, 
that is, not of seeing values, but of arranging commodi- 
ties. Its activity is necessary for accuracy, comparison, 
•constructive imagination, and orderliness. 

Intellect is the ability to see values, to reason induc- 
tively, and to make abstractions. Its application re- 
sults in creative imagination, discrimination, foresight, 
judgment, sense of proportion, and seriousness toward 
work. 

On the other hand. 

Desire is that personal preference which makes a 
child like one study better than another. It depends 
upon many things, his physical make-up, his inherit- 
ance of tradition, his home training, his health, him- 
self. And upon desire depends his capacity for affec- 
tion, moral action, culture, and good taste. 

Thought is the Use of the Mind 
AND THE Intellect. Not all mental power 
is power to think. Memory is not thought. 
Will is not thought. Thought is the use of 
the mind and the intellect. Thought is re- 



A FEW SIMPLE FACTS 59 

arranging on some definite plan material found 
in the memory. 

The simplest form of thought is in exer- 
cising the mind's power to perceive likeness 
and difference. From thinking on this plan 
have arisen, through more and more compli- 
cated sequence, the various activities of the 
mind in sorting, classifying, generalizing, and 
reasoning logically. 

The more difficult forms of thought arise 
from thinking on the intellectual plan; that 
is, from using the power to perceive cause 
and effect. Out of this plan have come, at 
later and later stages of man's development, 
reasoning inductively, seeing values, making 
abstractions, and testing principles. 

Sensation is not Thought. All the 
stock of materials for the mind and intellect 
to think about is got through the senses and 
through the senses only, and is stored in the 
memory. But the material does not do any 
thinking, neither does the storehouse ; and the 
process of gathering the one to put into the 
other is not thought; it is observation or per- 
ception, the use of the senses. 



60 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

The Senses are of Prime Importance 
TO Thought. All the material for thought 
comes through the senses, so if the thoughts 
are to be kept constantly sound and whole- 
some, the senses must constantly supply sound 
and wholesome material. The senses must 
themselves be kept sound, wholesome, and 
active, and they must be exercised upon sound 
and wholesome actualities. 

Mental is not Moral. Mental char- 
acteristics have no moral quality; and one 
of them is as valuable as the other. Even 
self-control and foresight are not moral; a 
skilled burglar must possess them both in 
a high degree. The school's primary aim is 
to give the child the most effective possible 
use of his characteristics, whatever they hap- 
pen to be. It intends to give him self -use. 
Whether he uses himself for good purposes 
is quite another matter, and not a problem 
for his mental training. 

Character is Alive. Every child has 
a multiple personality. To be sure, certain 
characteristics are cogent in him and stamp 
his character; certain talents are potent and 



A FEW SIMPLE FACTS 61 

determine his bent; certain tastes are active 
and influence his enjoyments. But he has in 
him, besides, thousands of more or less latent 
characteristics, talents, and tastes, which can 
be brought into play by stimulus, accidental 
or intentional. Any one of them, once brought 
into play, acts with a modifying and some- 
times revolutionary influence upon the whole 
child. Thus, capacities and tendencies are 
not predetermined and rigid; talents and 
tastes alter and grow. Only temperament 
remains, and that itself can be submerged 
by faulty physical health. 

Completeness entails Balance. Com- 
plete development must be by genuine activity 
of all the mental powers. This cannot be 
gained by a process of uninterrupted imita- 
tion, conformity, and obedience; neither can 
it be gained through unmitigated free choice. 
The two must be balanced. 

Schooling aims at Self-Use and Bal- 
anced Powers. Schooling can foster self- 
use and balanced powers. It cannot provide 
characteristics or desires. It works primarily 
upon the mental characteristics as they already 



62 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

exist in the child. Taste, talent, and moral 
character are beyond its direct province. An 
efficient man can be produced by judicious 
mental training, but not a cultivated man, 
a clever man, or a good man. The moral 
effect of a school is produced indirectly by 
the intensity with which it insists upon high 
and rigorous standards. The moral teach- 
ing of a good school is by practice, not 
precept. 

Real Teaching is by Guidance, not 
Conveyance. Three quarters of all skill- 
ful teaching consists in presenting opportuni- 
ties for mental action. A formed mind has 
a tendency to paralyze an unformed mind. 
The childish mind stands still when it is too 
much aware of an older presence. Therefore 
when children have been supplied with what 
they need at home or at school, they must 
be left as much as possible to themselves in 
the use of it. The less teaching the better, so 
long as they learn. The teaching should be 
just enough to insure steady progress and 
good mental habits. 

Often, once is enough. Unjaded minds. 



A FEW SIMPLE FACTS 63 

alert and thorough in their habits, notice 
what is heard or seen the first time it appears, 
so that many things need no drill for children 
who are well educated. The salient or curi- 
ous fact stays by them because it is salient 
or curious. 

Again, most things need not be remem- 
bered. The importance of them for educa- 
tion lies in the child's having apprehended 
their existence and so used them to build up 
a conception and comprehension of the uni- 
verse as it actually exists and has existed. 

The Subconscious Area is Many Times 
Larger than the Area of Attention. 
A child notices and is aware of only what he 
happens to be paying attention to; but all 
the while whatever enters his mind through 
any avenue is being diligently recorded by 
his memory, sorted by his mind, and judged 
by his intellect. All that goes on alpout him 
is making its impression. 

The Standard of Performance should 
BE High. Each thing should be done as 
well as that child can do it. A wise teacher 
is satisfied with nothing less. There is no 



64 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

more clear mark of the really well-educated 
man than his efficient power of performance. 
Partially balanced, semi-controlled persons 
laugh at the "particularity" of a high stand- 
ard, but when they want anything well done, 
from a well-cooked dinner to well-placed 
advice, they go straight to these same efficient 
people. 

Self-Reliance should be Habitual. 
The child must do for himself. When he is 
grown he will choose one special service which 
he can do best for others, and then will let 
others do most other things for him. While 
he is a child, he must, for many reasons, 
do everything possible for himself, — from 
buttoning his coat to learning his lessons. 
All that a grown person would need to know 
in order to shift for himself, a boy or girl 
must learn to do. This is not only true for 
practical and ethical reasons; it is urgent for 
mental and intellectual reasons also. The 
only limit to self-reliance must be his own 
temperament. 

Good Training leaves Four Marks. 
A ready practical imagination, an alert power 



A FEW SIMPLE FACTS 65 

of complete attention, a test for the real mean- 
ing of words, and a quick, accurate sense 
of relative values, are the equipment in mem- 
ory, will, mind, and intellect which a child 
gets from good mental training. 



PEDAGOGIC THEORIES 

We all know from memories of our own 
childhood, if not from watching other little 
children, that the number of things happen- 
ing at once in the development of a child 
is as great as the number of his faculties 
and emotions, characteristics, tendencies, and 
tastes; all these things are developing at once. 
Yet lately it has been a common process of 
educational theories to start with the uncon- 
scious assumption that only one thing at a 
time can happen in a child's development. 
Some of these theories are so very untenable 
that it would be interesting to investigate 
how many of them were set going by childless 
persons of an ingenious turn, who had not 
even a niece or a nephew under familiar ob- 
servation. 

Still, no educational theory, however fan- 
tastic or rigidly logical, was ever without its 
solid basis in valuable fact. What is fantas- 



PEDAGOGIC THEORIES 67 

tic readily disengages itself, and disappears 
by mere lightness. What is logical but un- 
sound is harder to dispose of. The very fact 
of its being logical makes it seem unavoidably 
right. The very word seems to involve rigid 
accuracy. Nevertheless, logical conclusions 
are not necessarily true conclusions. Logic ^ 
is a matter of words, not of facts. It is an 
excellent aid to investigation, but it cannot 
even test its own premises; once having 
started a course of logical thought from cer- 
tain premises, we are not at liberty to take 
up any further considerations along the way. 
Obviously such a device is not suited to be 
much used on educational problems, for all 
education is a perpetual process of taking 
fresh matter into consideration. Moreover, 
preconceived and carefully elaborated theories 
are a bar to unbiased observation. Sound 
educational methods are discovered by in- 
ductive reasoning, not by deductive logic 

* By this is meant deductive logic, the mathematical art of reason- 
ing from premises with precision. Inductive logic, so called, is not 
strictly logic at all. It is not a matter of words. It is a studying of 
the relations between facts, and should be called inductive reasoning. 
Logic proper deals with logi, i. e., words, and is carried on by the 
mind. Inductive reasoning is a matter of the intellect. 



68 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

And the solid basis which is in all theories, 
however mistaken, is discovered by the same 
process of observation and real intellectual 
thought. 

The following survey aims to show, in re- 
gard to various current theories of the day, 
how they all have this double character of a 
true basis and an unsafe superstructure. All 
are worth using; none is to be pushed to a 
logical completeness of use. 

Of Natural Development. It is true 
that a child's natural impulses, tastes, and 
purposes should be given room to expand. 

It is not true that for this expansion he 
needs absorb the whole house, the whole 
day, or the whole comfort of his house- 
mates. 

Moreover, his powers of self-control, and 
of conforming to other people's purposes, 
also need room to expand. 

Of Lying Fallow. It is true that a 
child may be over-urged, over-trained, and 
over-occupied during his early years. 

It is not true that in order to avoid these 
dangers we must leave him unguided and 



PEDAGOGIC THEORIES 69 

unrestricted in intellectual ways until he is 
eight years old, or, as one theory has it, even 
until he is twelve years old. 

Moreover, a child may be left inactive, 
inaccurate, and desultory so long that he 
is never after able to gain a thorough use 
of his own faculties. The mind, if it is to 
keep in health and grow, must from the be- 
ginning be exercised constantly and progres- 
sively. 

Of Early Learning. It is true that a 
child under seven years old should not be 
given obligatory tasks of long-continued men- 
tal effort ; and should not be put into the fixed 
machinery of a formal school. 

It is not true that a child under seven is 
injured by mental effort, and must be spared 
from acquiring any ideas except those which 
he can invent or discover for himself. 

Moreover, the natural curiosity of a child 
under seven will carry him easily through the 
beginnings of most knowledge, if he is given 
kindly opportunity. 

Of Learning to Read by a Special 
Method. It is true that a child will learn 



70 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

to read quickly if he is taught by some sys- 
tematic method. 

It is not true that any one special method is 
vastly superior to all others or that a system- 
atic combination of all is not best. 

Moreover, some very quick methods foster 
inaccuracy, and, if a child begins to read nor- 
mally early, spontaneity takes the place of sys- 
tem or rapidity. 

Of Kindergarten. It is true that little 
children, like all human creatures, learn much 
unconsciously through games and amuse- 
ment; and enjoy using their fingers and their 
fancy. Systematic work, too, benefits them. 

It is not true that the unconscious way is 
the only safe and valuable way for them to 
learn, and the only kind of educative plea- 
sure which they can enjoy. Children, like 
all of us, enjoy steady conscious work. They 
delight in the victories of purpose and effort. 

Moreover, their capacities grow rapidly, 
and often a game or occupation which to- 
day is educative is mere repetition next week. 
Again, the impression that work should seem 
like play is a very dangerous one to insist 



PEDAGOGIC THEORIES 71 

upon; it weakens the will and the courage. 
Also, there is danger in the spectacle of grown 
people, day after day making a whole morn- 
ing's occupation out of childish games and 
pleasures, and laboriously teaching what is 
perfectly easy to learn; it injures a child's 
sense of values and halts his self-dependence. 

Of Enjoying School. It is true that un- 
willing learning brings small gain, and that 
a child should be in the habit of enjoying his 
school work. It is true that his tasks should 
not seem a burden to him. 

It is not true that unwilling learning brings 
no gain, and it is not true that a state of 
exuberant conscious enthusiasm is a healthy 
mental condition, if pursued as a habit; or 
that doing what is easy is either peculiarly 
pleasant or particularly valuable. 

Moreover, a steady willing effort to do 
what is difficult and not in itself agreeable is 
one of the most pleasurable as well as one of 
the most valuable mental occupations. 

Of Racial Recapitulation. It is true 
that a child has within him the instincts of 
the earlier stages of civilization, and that he 



72 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

is more like a savage at three years old than 
he is likely to be at twenty. 

It is not true that any child develops in 
orderly sequence and proportion, through 
the evolutionary stages of the race, or that 
he leaves behind him, as he grows, the more 
primitive powers. Neither is it true that any 
two children develop in the same order or at 
the same rate. 

Moreover, every child also contains the 
tastes, instincts, and capacities of the coming 
race, and is in himself a prophecy of men to 
be. If we condone his savagery, we are likely 
to lose the opportunity to develop his finer 
self. The study of history throws light upon 
child study, not because children are bar- 
barians, but because barbarians are children. 
The powers are well-nigh identical. The 
civilized nature is, however, more developed 
from the very start. 

Of Manual Training. It is true — fun- 
damentally and importantly true — that, since 
we have bodies and live in a material world 
which supplies us with all the substance of 
our thoughts and knowledge, it is necessary 



PEDAGOGIC THEORIES 73 

for sound thought and action that we be fa- 
miliar through our bodily senses with the 
actual nature of this world and with the way 
to handle it eflficiently. It is true that manual 
training can be used to rouse dull brains and 
to steady the over-intellectual. 

It is not true that manual or any sentient 
training gives intellectual training or gives 
ethical training. It gives considerable men- 
tal training, and considerable training of the 
so-called moral qualities ; that is, it trains 
the brain and the instincts, but it involves 
scarcely any intellectual activity and has no 
moral purpose. It touches principally the 
perceptions and the will. It is in no particu- 
lar a substitute for book work or for good 
behavior. 

Moreover, if a large part of one's youth be 
spent in it, wandering thoughts and a prosaic 
mind are fostered. 

Of Laboratory Methods. It is true 
that the result of study which has omitted 
practical acquaintance with the material of 
which it treats, is barren and factitious. 

It is not true that in order to get practical 



74 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

acquaintance with material, a student must 
go through all the work which the original 
discoverers had to endure. Nor is it true 
that an intelligent general knowledge of a 
subject cannot be gained largely from other 
people. Such knowledge is no bar to sub- 
sequent original work. 

Moreover, for general purposes technical 
knowledge is not necessary, and the time 
spent by a child or youth in learning the 
intricacies of several subjects by actual con- 
tact could be much better spent in learning 
the larger aspect of many. One subject of 
each branch, known by the intimate labora- 
tory method, serves as a type for all others. 

Of Foreigners as Teachers. It is 
true that a cultivated foreigner speaks his 
native language with a desirable accent, and 
that in speaking a foreign language a well- 
educated child should imitate a good accent. 
It is true that older pupils can benefit much 
from talking with a good foreign teacher in 
his own language. In this way they begin to 
get at the real genius of the foreign language, 
and to see the nation through its own eyes; 



PEDAGOGIC THEORIES 75 

and so they may best get into sympathy with 
its point of view. 

It is not true that no cultivated person 
of the child's own nationality can speak a 
foreign language with a desirable accent so 
as to make a good model for pupils, or that 
a good accent is the chief desideratum in 
knowing a foreign language. 

Moreover, a foreigner almost never under- 
stands the habitual mental and moral atti- 
tudes of his pupils, and therefore is seldom 
a first-rate teacher for them, and is almost 
never a good disciplinarian. 

Of Culture Studies. It is true that 
some studies appeal more than others to the 
sympathies, to the aesthetic sense, and to the 
intellect as distinguished from the mind. 

It is not true that some studies are totally 
without such appeal, or that any make only 
this appeal. 

Moreover, any study, no matter how great 
an opportunity it gives for culture, can be so 
taught as not to suggest a hint of culture; 
and any study, no matter how apparently bar- 
ren of opportunity, can be so taught as to be 



76 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

redolent of culture, — for culture lies more in 
treatment than in material. 

Of Adolescence. It is true that with 
adolescence comes a great change and ex- 
pansion of nature, fuller depth of personal 
feeling, increased self-consciousness, need of 
growing independence, and all the rest. 

It is not true that this change and expan- 
sion should be looked upon as consequent to 
the sexual development or that all the ex- 
aggerations of this period must be treated 
with reference to the sexual functions. It is 
a period of expansion and change in every 
function. The various changes, bodily, mental, 
or emotional, are merely concomitant ; no one 
of them is exclusively a cause of the others. 

Moreover, the sexual change, although it 
is the least ethereal part of the adolescent 
growth, is in itself dignified, normal, and 
without disadvantage. Looking upon it as 
a complicated misfortune and difficult prob- 
lem is entirely unnecessary and misleading, 
and is seriously unwise. 

Of Home Schooling. It is true that 
persons who have been educated wholly at 



PEDAGOGIC THEORIES 77, 

home by first-rate teachers are generally highly 
developed, sensitive, and single-minded, spon- 
taneous, eager, and independent, and are apt 
to have a keen sense of the reality of facts. 

It is not true that home education can be 
depended upon to produce such results, for 
they imply first-rate teaching. Few parents 
are willing to pay high enough to secure first- 
rate private teaching, and still fewer first-rate 
teachers are interested to confine themselves to 
private work. Consequently the home-taught 
child is usually a poorly trained child. 

Moreover, a child reared wholly at home 
misses every by-product of going to school, 
the good ones along with the deleterious. He 
is usually over-sensitive, and seldom catches 
in after life the natural sense of fellowship, 
or the ease of competition and the ready ac- 
ceptance of criticism, which a good school 
makes possible. 

Of Public Schools. (a.) It is true that 
to advance the common weal every demo- 
cratic community must maintain free schools 
for its children, and must aim to teach in those 
schools whatever proves most eflScacious in 



78 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

the making of good citizens, — if the children 
cannot learn it elsewhere. 

It is not true that every child in that com- 
munity will necessarily be the better citizen 
for going to such schools, even when they are 
good. 

Moreover, very few communities main- 
tain really good public schools. Most public 
schools are simply better in varying degrees 
than no schools. 

(6.) It is true that in a homogeneous and 
enlightened community a public school can 
supply all the formal mental training neces- 
sary to any normal child, and that attendance 
upon such a school in such a community is 
on the whole desirable for every normal child. 

It is not true that this universal attendance 
is desirable in an ordinary American com- 
munity, where the amount of home training 
received by the children ranges from none at 
all to the most perfect yet attained in civili- 
zation. For a child does not always get the 
mental training he needs, simply by being 
taught suitable subjects. A highly developed, 
well-trained child, who constantly hears edu- 



PEDAGOGIC THEORIES 79 

cated talk at home, is capable of a much more 
rapid and rich treatment of any subject than 
the child of an uninformed home can usually 
cope with. 

Moreover, a public school, the overruling 
majority of whose pupils come from positively 
primitive homes, must teach, and teach 
crudely, many things which a more fortu- 
nate child gets naturally and much better 
at home. 

(c.) It is true that a child who goes to a pub- 
lic school gets a varied experience of human 
nature, discovers that his own home ways are 
not the only ways, and learns to decide and 
choose for himself, since he finds no con- 
sensus of public opinion which he can or 
need respect. 

It is not true that this sort of personal inde- 
pendence is necessarily a good thing. It may 
engender that go-as-you-please self-confidence 
and disregard of other people's standards and 
tastes which is so much the mark of a crude, 
uncultivated mind. Or, on the other hand, 
it may make the undiscriminating youth con- 
clude that where there are so many opinions^ 



80 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

it is not necessary to hold to any very strongly. 
The ameliorating and steadying effect of a 
strongly felt public opinion, such as exists in 
a well-established private school, is often very 
excellent; vigorous natures are ameliorated, 
weak ones are steadied by it. 

Moreover, the standards of a company of 
parents who have grasped and are using the 
full inheritance of civilization are many gen- 
erations more correct and discriminating 
than the standards of a heterogeneous mass, 
most of whom do not apprehend the signi- 
ficance of fine distinctions. "Being par- 
ticular" is a bugbear to undeveloped minds. 

BUT 

The tendency of private schools is to be 
conciliating and narrow. In order to be as 
good as a good public school, a private school 
must be vigorously exacting and sincerely 
democratic. 

Of Coeducation. It is true that boys 
and girls, youths and maids, men and women, 
should be upon terms of comfortable intel- 
lectual and social fellowship and of mutual 
understanding. Every means should be taken 



PEDAGOGIC THEORIES 81 

to secure such a relation. It is true that one 
of the best means to secure such a relation is 
to provide their early schooling as well as all 
other early occupations in common. The Old 
World way of early separation has fostered 
much mutual misunderstanding, masculine 
selfishness, and feminine foolishness. The 
New World way has brought mutual under- 
standing, unprecedented masculine sympathy, 
and feminine common-sense. If we yield in 
this country to a tendency toward separation, 
we shall revert to the old conditions, forfeit- 
ing our obvious preeminence and clear ad- 
vantage. 

It is not true that going to school together 
necessarily forwards this relation, or that the 
fellowship cannot be had without common 
schooling. The behavior of the parents is the 
controlling factor. 

Moreover, when boys and girls reach their 
'* teens," the kind of interest which they take in 
one another begins to change, and no amount 
of care at home can prevent an element of 
excitement from creeping in. At this time 
intellectual work had generally best be done 



82 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

apart, though the social life and intellectual 
interests should go on in common, as frank 
and friendly as before. 

Of Boarding Schools. It is true that 
the circumstances of many families make 
a boarding school the wise solution for some 
of their problems. It is true that a boarding 
school can give to a city child country surround- 
ings, or to a country child city surroundings. 
It can make the child's occupations well-regu- 
lated, wholesome, and well-proportioned. It 
can give all the influences of strong public 
opinion and the discipline of common duties, 
avoiding the home disadvantage of special 
criticism. 

It is not true that the ideal life for boy 
or girl could be to live always in a boarding 
school. Because of numbers, a boarding 
school must always be over-formal, over- 
regulated, and unnaturally impersonal. Uni- 
formity is its fixed limit, often reached, never 
out of sight, and kept away only by unending 
vigilant intelligence. 

Moreover, a boarding school seldom gives 
to a boy or girl unavoidable opportunity to 



PEDAGOGIC THEORIES 83 

gain familiar knowledge of those who are 
different from themselves in sex, age, or con- 
dition. At school a boy need see no one un- 
officially except boys like himself. He is not 
forced to share any lives but those which are 
his own in kind. Girls cannot be seen in- 
formally, nor can women often be known with 
exceptional familiarity; all adults at the 
school must bear the same official relation 
to each boy that they bear to fifty or three 
hundred and fifty other boys, and frequently 
they bear no unofficial relation at all. Ac- 
quaintance with servants, laborers, trades- 
men, doctors, engineers, farmers, is only 
casual or non-existent. Consequently the 
boarding-school life, like all institutional 
life, tends to exaggerate the inmate's in- 
stinctive exclusiveness. Man thinks easily of 
those who are like himself. He thinks with 
discomfort of those who are different. So he 
looks upon his own kind, the people he is 
used to, with satisfaction. He looks upon out- 
siders with suspicion, scorn, or ridicule; or 
else he takes no account of them at all. 
So that, while boarding-school life is often 



84 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

a happy issue out of serious difficulties, it is 
not a natural, all-round sort of experience, 
and in most boarding schools the inherent 
drawbacks are not sufficiently guarded 
against. Fortunately there is in America 
the long summer vacation to help keep the 
balance. 

Of Examinations. It is true that ex- 
aminations can be passed without a sound 
knowledge of the subjects concerned and with- 
out a good mental habit or training. 

It is not true that ability to pass an exami- 
nation interferes with sound knowledge or 
good mental condition. 

Moreover, wise examinations, wisely pre- 
pared for, give a definite comprehensible aim 
and form to school study, which is of great 
service in securing mental firmness, clear- 
ness, and accuracy. 

Of Pedagogic Theories in general. 
It is true that during the last fifty years close 
study of educational problems has immea- 
surably bettered the ideal of teaching, and 
has made wise teachers able to train average 
children to much more efficient use of them- 



PEDAGOGIC THEORIES 85 

selves. Psychology, pedagogics, and child 
study have great and indispensable value. 
Educational theory enlightens and enlarges 
educational practice. 

It is not true that pedagogy has been re- 
duced to a science. In the nature of things, 
it cannot be other than a systematized series 
of suggestions, a condensed process of draw- 
ing attention to conspicuous facts and pos- 
sibilities in mental training. Teaching is an 
art. No art can be taught by words or re- 
duced to rules. It must be learned by instinct, 
perception, and practice. Educational theories 
are good as suggestion, not as prescription. 

Moreover, theory has had an unwarranted 
hold upon our school practice during the last 
twenty-five years. Numberless elaborated 
theories have been reduced to practice. Each 
was built upon detached observation of some 
isolated truth which had struck some in- 
genious-minded person. Each had a central 
stem of truth, surrounded by an artificial 
efflorescence of logical fancy. Each theory 
offered a more or less complete system of 
education, consistent within itself, but wholly 



86 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

disregardful of a host of surrounding truths 
equally salient and potent in actual life. The 
builders of these insufficient theories were 
fascinated with the idea of consistent com- 
pleteness; they were in love with the vision 
of rounded perfection. Now, this building of 
systems by conformity and continuity, this 
classifying and arranging, is the special talent 
of the mind by itself. Active minds want to 
know a cause and a rule for everything. They 
try to understand everything and to put every- 
thing in its place. They see the beauty and 
use of order. Active intellects see this and 
more. They see that orderly systems of rule 
and logic are good in routine and in science. 
And they see also that in art and life such 
restrictions are impracticable and not to be 
desired. Completeness would limit life. Con- 
sistency would restrict art. Life and art are 
large, limitless, unrestricted. They must have 
free space to grow and shift, to change and 
interchange their parts. No art can be ex- 
pressed in any but its own medium. Each 
life presents new conditions. So every theory 
and all theories are too small and too special 



PEDAGOGIC THEORIES 87 

to serve as guides in education. While they 
remain theories, however, they do good, for 
they stimulate practical imagination to action. 
But when they are put into logical practice, 
ardently, conscientiously, and exclusively, 
their limitations appear. Preoccupied with 
fresh-found truths, they fail to allow for the 
existence of time-honored facts. Thus, in 
the last twenty-five years, many children have 
received a limited advantage in some one 
portion of their beings, while several of the 
most obvious and important of their needs 
have gone unprovided for. A generation of 
youth has come up into the colleges and into 
the business world unprovided with some of 
the simplest tools of efficiency. That genera- 
tion has not yet passed by, for the schools have 
not yet come to their senses. 

It is not necessary to specify the theories 
that have done most harm to our schools 
and are still acting injuriously. Every one 
knows something of them. He has seen the 
results in himself, in his younger brothers, or 
in his children. It is these results that earnest 
parents and wise teachers work against. The 



88 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

value of theory and discussion, speculation 
and cautious experiment, they fully recognize, 
but they seriously set themselves to prevent 
these eflScient aids from being put in posi- 
tions of absolute command. The need is that 
perception, experience, and common sense 
should rule, while theory urgently advises. 



HOME TEACHING IN 
BABYHOOD 

For children of three, four, or five years, all 
beginnings should be unconscious. Just as 
a child of three months does not know that 
he is beginning to be taught self-control, 
just as a child of a year does not know that 
he is beginning to walk and talk, so he should 
not be aware when he begins to learn reading, 
writing, arithmetic, geometry, French, Ger- 
man, history, geography, science, music, art 
of any sort. When at six or seven he goes to 
school, a child should find himself already 
interested in all these things and therefore 
happy to learn more of them. It is enough in 
his first months of school that the surround- 
ings and methods of learning are new; the 
task and strain of becoming self-aware are tax 
enough upon his energies. There should not 
be the burden added of unfamiliar subjects. 
Four generations ago, little children both in 



90 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

England and America were taught the rudi- 
ments at home, as a matter of course. The 
mother, the aunt, or the older sister usually 
was the teacher. 

These unconscious beginnings require home 
guidance, — guidance by the mother or some 
one in the family, not by a specially provided 
and unfamiliar personality. By this means 
the first learning comes naturally as a part of 
life's adventures, and is wholly healthful for 
the child. He scarcely knows that he is being 
taught. But most mothers object that they 
cannot teach. They do not stop to observe 
that there cannot be anything difficult about 
such teaching, for the child of six teaches 
the child of five just such things. In a large 
family the younger children often pick it all 
up from the older, so that no one knows 
when they learned to read, etc. A self-dis- 
trustful mother forgets this, and imagines 
teaching to be a technical mystery. School 
teaching is indeed an art, but all early learn- 
ing is spontaneous, and requires in the teacher 
not art but friendship. It comes by active 
curiosity, active imitation, and eager experi- 



HOME TEACHING IN BABYHOOD 91 

ment. It asks from a mother only willing 
interest, which makes her cheerfully ready to 
impart and instigate. 

The result of it is, that working either with 
hand or brain becomes to the child an integral 
part of life. He can never think of it as a thing 
apart, required by outsiders and only in the 
obviously artificial existence of school hours. 
The spontaneousness of his learning gives 
him an eager sense of its reality, and the 
undirected, unsystematized, unrestricted way 
of it gives him independence and initiative. 
A second result is, that he is never without 
resources, for he has had an intimate com- 
panionship since his babyhood with a great 
variety of progressive occupations. 

Since the way is not a plotted and com- 
plicated path of system, any interested mother 
with the right implements can put her child 
in the way of these good beginnings. She has 
only to give her child the chance of being 
interested in desirable things, and then to en- 
courage curiosity, imitation, and experiment 
by her ready interest and sympathetic ad- 
miration, along with plenty of cheerful help- 



92 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

ing. She will find they learn in a most curious 
way, by pauses and leaps. She gives them the 
clue and then lets them draw out the thread; 
lets them follow the trace themselves, thread- 
ing the labyrinth with all its surprises, and 
arriving alone and triumphant at the centre. 
Being taught actually hampers the rapidity of 
personal thought. A child well started learns 
many things fastest by itself. She need only 
be careful not to force attention or insist at 
first upon any learning as a task, and not to 
try to make them reason about the material. 
Even very simple reasoning is apt to strain 
their understanding. Little children do not 
compare things much. They learn each thing 
as it stands. Of course, there is a constant 
unconscious classification going on in their 
minds, but most of what interests them is 
noticing, imitating, reproducing, classifying, 
and recording. Observation and memory are 
their only really developed powers. 

Specifically, one may say that the method 
for home teaching in babyhood is as unme- 
thodical as this : — 



HOME TEACHING IN BABYHOOD 93 

FOR ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Have in the house any (or all) of the good 
collections of verse for children. Read or re- 
peat poems to the child. What he enjoys he 
will ask to hear again. Do not be afraid of 
what seems "too old," unless it has in it some- 
thing to frighten or burden a child. Repeat 
a favorite often, and as soon as he shows a 
power to repeat any part of it himself, be 
pleased. Do not insist at first on the learning. 
Merely admire. 

Do the same sort of thing with prose, al- 
lowing for the fact that for very little people 
prose is harder to follow and not so attrac- 
tive as poetry. Following the thread of a 
story is too taxing for a very inexperienced 
mind. Older children of from four to six 
should enjoy being read to for half an hour 
or more. 

FOR LEARNING TO READ 

Supply alphabet blocks, with pictures, as 
early as two years old. Call the letters by 
name often in playing with the child. Play 
games with them; e.g., turn all the pictures 



94 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

down and guess what picture is under each 
letter, etc. 

To a child of three, sing the alphabet. 
When he wants to use a pencil, make the 
letters, printing or writing, sometimes for 
him to copy, or let him copy from the blocks, 
or from a primer. Get the primer before there 
are any regular times set for lessons. Often 
sound over simple words, phonetically, and 
let the child guess what they are. 

At four years, take the primer. It is best 
based on the letter and syllable method, not 
on the word or the picture method. Speak 
of the letters by name as well as by sound. 
Have the child sit down with you every day 
for ten minutes or as long as he is easily in- 
terested. Read to him, pointing out the words 
and often sounding the letters. Let him talk 
about it and ask questions and digress as 
much as he chooses. Little by little he will 
begin to catch the idea and begin to guess, 
imitate, and experiment. Praise and encour- 
age. Before the year is over, he has the idea 
of reading. 

Be sure that he knows the alphabet. 



HOME TEACHING IN BABYHOOD 95 

FOR WRITING 

From printing letters at random when he 
is three years old, let him go on to copying 
whole words when he likes. At four show 
him the writing letters. He will soon like to 
try copying them, too. Or begin at the very 
beginning with script, if you choose. 

A typewriter is most useful here, as a 
working plaything. 

FOR ARITHMETIC 

A child of two likes to learn to count as 
part of learning to talk. Encourage this, but 
try to make 10 the stopping place, until he 
has learned so far thoroughly. 

At about three years old begin to count 
things. He will probably understand already 
how many 3 is. Count things at the table; 
count beads, blocks, etc., at any time you 
happen to think of it. Now and then see if 
he can count them. If he can, show your 
pleasure. 

At six let him own an abacus, and count, 
add, subtract, divide, and multiply on it. 
At about four, having let him see the figures 



96 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

often in order, and perhaps learn their names, 
let him learn to copy them, but not beyond 10. 
Take an interest with him in adding I's and 
in subtracting them. As he gains skill, try 
him with more difficult problems. 

During his fifth year, perhaps, show him 
about halves, thirds, and quarters, etc., with 
real things in the course of conversation. 

FOR LANGUAGES 

Children find one sound as good as another 
to represent an object. They quickly learn to 
understand one another's baby talk and special 
words. So the notion of a foreign language 
is easy to them. One word is as sensible as 
another to learn, and several words for the 
same thing do not seem out of the way. Is 
not a dish called also a plate, a saucer, a bowl, 
and what not.^ 

Say phrases, sentences, and little jingles to 
him in foreign languages. When he begins to 
pick up English jingles, give him a chance 
to learn French and German jingles, too. 

Have at least one picture book with jingles 
and counting, etc., in French and one in Ger- 



HOME TEACHING IN BABYHOOD 97 

man. Read them often, and explain them as 
you do the English ones. A single book or 
two of this sort, well selected, will give a child 
as useful a vocabulary and as much grammar 
as he would get at the same age from a foreign 
nurse. The nurses can be had, but there are 
serious reasons against them. The primers 
used by French and German children are 
good for this purpose. Some people find 
phonographs a great help; rolls for teaching 
foreign languages can be bought. 

FOR HISTORY 

When you are telling stories, tell some of 
them from history, from the Bible, and later 
from mythology. At five years old, put a 
simple history reader among the child's story 
books. 

FOR GEOGRAPHY 

In his play with blocks and sticks, a child 
outlines houses, stables, and roads for its dolls 
and itself, — mere plans without elevation. 
At four years or earlier, draw just such plans 
on paper when you are telling stories, and 



m HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

later make little maps of real places. Have 
a little pasteboard globe and tell him it looks 
like a little world. Show him places on it, 
€tc. Have books of geography stories. Have 
a primary geography among his books. 

FOR SCIENCE 

Show an interest in plants, beasts, birds, 
the sky, and the sea. Tell names. Give bits 
of desultory information. Answer questions if 
you can, or wonder with him. Pull flowers to 
pieces and call the parts by name just as you 
call him by name. In fact, share all your own 
pleasure and initial knowledge of these things. 

Have colored picture books of "Birds and 
their Homes," "Our Animal Friends," etc. 
Let him feel that you feel the beautiful 
sacredness, mystery, and wonder of life. 

Take him to a natural history museum if 
it is convenient, but do not exhaust him with 
too much or with many explanations. 

FOR ART 

Keep his voice gentle. The time to teach 
the correct use of the speaking voice is while 



HOME TEACHING IN BABYHOOD 99 

he is learning to talk. Sing to him. Play to 
him. See how soon he will sing a musical 
sound after you. Sing the scale often, or 
play it. Play and sing the intervals. Let 
him see music written. Encourage him to 
imitate you. At four years old, point out the 
written notes for the scale, etc. 

Some children will sort colors by the time 
they are a year old. Whenever the power 
comes, encourage it. Name the principal col- 
ors to a child under three, until he learns 
them. Afterwards do not hesitate to name 
shades if he is interested. Have reproduc- 
tions of good pictures in the house. Try to 
have his picture books, some of them, artis- 
tically good. Let him go to an art museum 
if convenient. Let him gaze and ask ques- 
tions, but do not try to be didactic. 

Give him a chance to learn to do all sorts 
of things with his hands, particularly things 
which will be permanent satisfactions, like 
painting, sewing, sawing, digging, etc. Let 
him take the implements and try to imitate 
you. Let him get the *'feel" of them before 
you try to teach him the very best methods. 



100 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

Many of the kindergarten occupations are 
good and interesting. Froebel intended that 
they should be used at home with the mother. 
But a child should not be encouraged to keep 
on doing them, after he has grown capable 
of doing something more difficult. A young 
child's capability and skill grow rapidly. It 
is a good plan after he gets to be four years 
old to manage so that he always can have 
something visible accomplished at the end 
of the day, be it ever so slight, — something 
done which can be shown to his father, for 
instance. If the mind after this age is let 
to play all day, it rapidly grows averse to 
ordered application and submission to au- 
thority. 

Have him do every possible service for 
himself, e. g., undressing, dressing,^ feeding, 
etc. This is very important. A grown person, 
having learned all these things, may delegate 
them. A child must not. 

Encourage him to share the various house- 

1 Until it is about ten years old a child should on all ordinary oc- 
casions be as imtrammeled by clothes as a puppy is untrammeled 
by his coat. The clothes should be made to suit his occupations, 
not his occupations made to suit his clothes. 



HOME TEACHING IN BABYHOOD 101 

hold activities. No matter how much paid 
service is employed, he must be allowed to 
help himself and others. Errands, little serv- 
ices, imitative activities, all are legitimate 
joy and education to him. Do not drive away 
this kindly spirit. Do not force him to learn 
afresh, late in life, after he has lost the knack, 
that there is no pleasure sweeter than help- 
ing other people. He knows it instinctively. 
Do not becloud him. Let him do, clumsily 
and slowly, it may be, what you or another 
can do readily. 

FOR EXERCISE 

Besides his spontaneous exercise of imi- 
tative play, a child needs some organized 
amusement. Let him learn to play compan- 
ionable games as soon as possible. 

Lead him on to act out his favorite poems, 
etc. Nothing is better exercise for all the 
powers at once than acting. 

In short, all that this early home teaching 
involves is companionableness between mother 
and child. Share with the child all the simple 



102 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

elements of your own interests, pleasures, and 
accomplishments, — just as his next older 
brothers and sisters do. This solves most 
happily the difficult question of what to do 
with the child at table. He learns to talk 
about things which interest both himself and 
his elders. 

It does not involve trying to teach him 
much or systematically, nor does it involve 
trying to answer all his questions. A frank 
"I do not know," or "I cannot tell you that 
till you are older," is often the best answer. 
Nor need the teaching be continuously pro- 
gressive. A little child learns well by fits and 
starts. One day he tries and makes a boggle. 
Let him not try the thing again for three days 
or two weeks; when he comes back to it, he 
has often improved much in the handling of it. 

It does involve a half hour, or an hour, in 
most days, when the mother has occupations 
which will let her mind be given to the child. 
If she does the family mending, this is easy. 
If she does it not, she will probably have to 
make time to be with the children. That is 
not difficult, or a great exaction, for she must 



HOME TEACHING IN BABYHOOD 103 

have some way of knowing her own children, 
and the only way to do it is to share their 
occupations, — to do something with them. 
Her choice is between doing something which 
they suggest, and doing something which she 
suggests. If she simply follows their sugges- 
tions, there is a single gain of friendship. If 
they do what she suggests, the gain is double; 
not only she gains their friendship, but they 
gain new interests and powers. 

Whether she plays with them or works 
with them, she should expect them to be 
prompt and orderly, and to do well whatever 
they do. She should expect a high standard 
of performance, — high, that is, for the child, 
not high for a grown person. 

Lest all this should be misconstrued into a 
plea for the old rigid system of keeping chil- 
dren constantly at work, let the statement be 
here in words set down, that children and 
mothers both need time to themselves. The 
more children's play can be without oversight, 
the better. The more the days in which a 
mother gets an hour without companions, the 
better. But there is more time than one hour 



104 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

in each day, and more things than play in each 
life. All the permanent satisfactions come 
through work. We owe it to the children to 
make work a natural customary part of their 
life, so that a day seems queer to them without 
some work in it. 

Finally, a child's originality is helped, not 
injured, by feeding in these ways upon the 
ideas of others. Original thinkers are always 
full of knowledge. They begin where others 
have left off. We all depend on our fellows 
for inspiration. Without them, thought is 
meagre and primitive. 



GOOD READING 

EvERY-DAY acts are not usually controlled by 
deliberate, responsible convictions. An ordi- 
nary man's ordinary working principles are 
based on what he conceives to be expedient 
for himself. These conceptions he has been 
accumulating from his innumerable experi- 
ences ever since he was a baby. He calls them 
all beliefs; but they range through personal 
prejudices, hasty conclusions, acquired prin- 
ciples, and accepted conventionalities. 

A very few of these he has thought out for 
himself. He can perhaps tell how he came 
by some few others. But most of them he has 
always had ; that is to say, he picked them up 
in his childhood. These he calls instinctive. 
But, instinctive or acquired or accepted, he 
does not have time or inclination to examine 
and compare them. He has a host of other 
more interesting and important things to do. 
So his beliefs remain as they happen to come, 



106 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

and often they are inconsistent with wider 
experience, as well as mutually contradictory. 
He gets into trouble through them, without 
knowing why. So it matters very much what 
impressions and experiences he accumulates 
in his growing years. 

Because a child's impressions and experi- 
ences become in this way a part of himself 
for life, education continually concerns itself 
with selecting for him such experiences as 
will impress on him the best and most uni- 
versally true beliefs. And as books are the 
storehouse of all human experience, educa- 
tion concerns itself heartily with the books 
which a child reads. And reading is, indeed, 
a powerful purveyor of impressions. It is a 
process of vicarious experience, and to a child 
those experiences which his mind alone 
shares are quite as influential as what his 
senses share as well. Herein lies the reason 
for carefully selecting children's reading and 
rigidly allowing them only the very best; not 
only the very best as literature but the very 
best as ideas. A mother who changes the 
words of "Georgie Porgie" so that he teases 



GOOD READING 107 

the girls instead of kissing them is not fan- 
tastical. It is of great practical importance 
that the little child's first associations with all 
words should be with those words at their 
very best. Kissing in its best estate is not a 
thing to make the girls cry, and with any other 
kissing a child should have nothing to do, — 
because with any other he should have no- 
thing to do at any stage of his life. He is to 
become the best kind of a man that he can, 
and he must be given the best possible chance 
to do it. 

So, too, with all ideas of cruelty, vulgarity, 
and unkindness. A little child should hear 
no hint of them, beyond what he has to cure 
in himself; because in his own best self 
they should never play a part. All of a very 
little child's reading should be about only 
gentle, brave, humorous, and right things, even 
to the minutest details ; because it is the de- 
tails, the single words, that children notice 
most. This rule holds, let us say, up to five 
or six years old. (A good way to insure a 
child against hearing the wrong kind of read- 
ing from chance visitors is to mark the read- 



108 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

able parts of his books. Seldom mark things 
for omission. They then become food for 
curiosity.) 

From five or six years old to eleven or twelve, 
this rigid exclusion of the disagreeable is less 
and less necessary. They accept the facts in 
a sense of their own, for their imaginations are 
still unchecked, and they know nothing of the 
limitations of life. Romance, fancy, fantasy, 
is their natural realm, and they revel also in 
all the aspects of children and of childlike 
life. But they should catch nothing of the 
binding, saddening restrictions of later years. 
Pettiness, meanness, or shallowness of tone 
or substance are most objectionable, and all 
the sordid, hideous aspects of adult life are 
out of place in a child's reading. Likewise 
a child should be able to see quite clearly 
which of his books and which parts his parents 
like best, which they think trivial. 

From eleven to sixteen years the question 
of forbidding special books has to be grappled 
with. Up to that time it is fairly easy to keep 
a child so well supplied with thoroughly 
good reading that he is not eager to read 



GOOD READING 109 

other things. After eleven, if he reads at all, he 
wants to read what his companions are read- 
ing, and he generally resents control. Prob- 
ably it is safe to say that no book should be 
absolutely forbidden. Proscription only gives 
it an exaggerated importance, making it seem 
to contain something of especial interest. Inci- 
dentally, proscription puts an unfair tax upon 
fidelity. "Trust!" is an even more exacting 
command for a boy than for a dog. The dog 
is not hampered by being able to think. 

Books undesirable for youth are of three 
sorts, — the paltry books, the profound books, 
and the perverted books, — each just about 
as undesirable as the others. Banalities, in- 
soluble problems, and evil practices are 
equally bad food for a growing mind. To pre- 
vent a young person from reading such things 
we must depend, first, upon a wholesome 
taste created by all his previous reading and 
mode of life, which will make him incurious 
and easily disgusted; second, upon his accu- 
mulated respect for our judgment, to make 
him believe us right when we strongly recom- 
mend postponement; third, upon a constant 



110 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

supply of equally interesting but more desir- 
able books. 

In addition to positively undesirable read- 
ing (which varies according to the child), 
there is a large mass of books which are not 
positively objectionable, and yet we cannot 
recommend them. They do not amount to 
much. The youngster should understand 
very clearly the dijfference between our recom- 
mending and our simply allowing. A book 
which has the sanction of our recommenda- 
tion he will read with much more credence 
than the merely tolerated book. Herein lies 
the safety in letting a well-prepared child of 
any age browse in a library. On the other 
hand, when we are reading aloud to any age, 
it is well sometimes to skip passages which 
we cannot personally countenance. Finally, 
we need never fear to trust any one with 
first- rate things which he cannot understand. 
The fine spirit of them will breathe into him, 
and their power will seize him. 

After the age of six, reading should not be 
made specially simple for him either in words 
or in construction, nor must ideas be kept 



GOOD READING 111 

entirely within his comprehension. Better 
Shakespeare at six than Miss Alcott at sixteen. 
Sometimes a httle fellow of ten or twelve is 
kept on books which are supposed to be suited 
to his age, when really his intellect is much 
beyond them. A child with a strong taste for 
reading should be given the best literature 
of past generations. He should never be kept 
on books written especially for children. On 
them his intellect starves, and he will show 
signs of being underfed, — peevishness, rest- 
lessness, nervousness, and lassitude. It is im- 
portant, too, that the books he reads should 
not be all in one style. He should early be 
accustomed to a great variety, and not falter 
before long sentences or long words, old- 
fashioned style, or even dialect. 

Beware of emulative interest. Beware for 
the child who listens because you want him 
to, or because he thinks it is grown-up to like 
grown-up things. There are the germs of 
intellectual hypocrisy and shallow culture. 
And do not let him get the habit of skipping, 
himself. Grown persons may skip in their 
reading, because they are able to judge what 



112 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

part is worth reading. But for a child the 
habit of skipping is pernicious. It makes 
him lazy, inattentive, and desultory. It takes 
away all chance of his becoming a discrim- 
inating reader. There is no need of his read- 
ing many books, but what he does read he 
should read thoroughly. 

Whether he should be allowed, before he 
is fifteen, to read magazines and newspapers 
is a question upon which parents naturally 
differ very much. Undoubtedly the best re- 
sults, intellectually and mentally, are got by 
keeping him away from such heterogeneous 
masses of mixed-up good and poor stuff, until 
the judgment has a firm standard of compar- 
ison. The material of a newspaper does not 
pertain to childhood; the material of maga- 
zines is of very varying value. 

Whether Shakespeare and most of the 
older writers are best read in school editions, 
each child's parents will decide anew. But 
a parent who gives the child the full text 
takes a grave responsibility. Until the nine- 
teenth century our civilization had not 
reached a high level of feeling about sex. 



GOOD READING 113 

Sacredness was recognized in many relations 
of life, but not in that one. So a child who 
reads those older writers just as they wrote 
gets a semi-civilized idea about sex, ugly and 
most inferior to the best understanding of his 
own generation. The comprehension of sex 
cannot be well established before the age of 
sixteen, seventeen, or even older, and just as 
we give a little child only the best ideas of 
manners and morals until its standards are 
clearly set, so the idea of sex should be kept 
at its truest and sweetest until it is well fixed 
among the beautiful and sacred possessions of 
the mind. The less the girls, especially, are 
made vividly aware through their reading of 
possible misuse of the life-giving power, the 
more help they are to themselves and to the 
boys. Boys, older boys, must be more aware, 
but they should not be over-loaded in pro- 
portion to the other contents of their minds. 
It is worth while to remember that the 
adult literature of one half-century becomes 
youthful literature in the next fifty years. 
George Eliot was food for mature minds in 
1860. But now her methods and her wisdom 



114 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

have become part of our general intellectual 
inheritance. She does not come as a totally 
new experience to this generation. In this 
way, all that is wholesome in the literature of 
past centuries is suited to young minds. What 
is not wholesome no one need ever read, ex- 
cept for historical interest. There is no foun- 
dation for the fear that wide reading and an 
early knowledge of literature will injure origi- 
nality and take off the bloom from enjoyment. 
All active original thinkers are wide readers; 
and good literature, like good art, good music, 
beautiful scenery, and fine character, grows 
more admirable the better it is known. 

There seems to be no good reason for mak- 
ing the reading of boys different from that of 
their sisters, and much reason for making it 
the same, so that the contents of each one's 
mind shall be familiar and dear to the other. 
The best books are all virile enough for a 
boy and warm-hearted enough for a girl. Of 
course there is a kind of book which is more 
sure to interest the average boy and a kind 
which is more sure to interest girls. But 
this is not a basis for a fixed distinction. 



GOOD READING 115 

It is not important that a child should read 
many books, but it is important that he should 
read first-rate books; that is, books which 
are good as literature and good as thought. 
As he grows older he must read also an in- 
creasing number of second-rate books, just 
as his knowledge of what is second-rate in 
every direction must increase. But if a child 
cares to read at all, something to suit his 
taste at any time can always be found among 
the books that are most excellent. These he 
should never be without, however little he 
reads. He should never be without the pre- 
sent experience of what is first-rate. Never 
forget that his reading is an experience, not a 
pastime. 



DISCIPLINE 

The problem of discipline carries us out of 
the field of merely mental training into the 
undefinable, irreducible realm of personal 
relations. Social consciousness, a desire to be 
kind overruling the desire to follow one's 
own impulses, a subordination of one's own 
immediate convenience to the comfort of all 
or to the gaining of some distant good, a 
realization of future and past as equally alive 
with the present, a linking of foresight and 
imagination with will and love of right, pre- 
ference of good behavior to bad behavior, — 
in short, self-government with a moral pur- 
pose, — these create the aims of discipline ; 
and to help a child gain these affords a prob- 
lem almost entirely apart from questions of 
mental training. It is a problem of how to 
reach the child's desire, and having reached 
it how to direct it toward the most enduring 
things. Just as mental training cannot be in- 



DISCIPLINE 117 

eluded in a science, so, and much more, the 
problems of discipHne cannot be solved by a 
system. 

Discipline is the process of regulating so- 
cial conduct. If desire possessed in itself 
judgment, so that it could ascertain for itself 
which are the most enduring things, then the 
discipline "problem would be no problem at 
all: all children would be born with a moral 
sense. But desire is at one end of the child's 
nature, and judgment is at the other. Desire 
is his most primitive spiritual possession, and 
judgment is his most civilized. There is no 
natural cooperation between them. More- 
over judgment bases its decisions upon expe- 
rience, and a child has no experience, either 
personal or imparted. His elders it is who 
must supply him with selected experience, 
and impart to him the conclusions of their 
own experience and of the experience of 
those who have gone before them. So he 
gets material upon which to exercise his own 
judgment. His desire can be depended upon 
to like best the best thing which it appre- 
hends, but unaided by judgment it cannot 



118 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

ascertain what is best. By providing him 
with significant experience and convincing 
example, his elders can help create in him that 
combination of desire with judgment which is 
called moral sense. In many children it does 
not need to be created, it is there eagerly ready 
to be used. 

Unfortunately for the average child, the 
elders often do not know how to reach his 
desire or how to appeal to his judgment; 
that is, they do not know how to discipline 
him. In fact, trouble in managing a child is 
most often caused by the stupidity or igno- 
rance of some grown-up mentor, past or 
present. It is our incapacity to understand 
children instinctively that makes all the 
problems of discipline. We meet obstacles 
which we do not understand, and then, 
thwarted, we clumsily forget the ultimate 
object of our discipline in the confusion of 
that moment's discomfort. We are met at 
the outset, even in the littlest baby, by native 
independence, by conservatism, by tempera- 
ment mental and spiritual, and by change- 
ableness. 



DISCIPLINE 119 

The first obstacle, his native independence, 
is strong in every normal American. Perhaps 
the little Japanese are docile ; our children are 
not. Their first instinct upon meeting a 
difficulty is resistance. If they fall in climb- 
ing a rock, they immediately go to climb that 
rock again. We admire and approve it in 
them. But when they come up against us, 
ourselves, as the difficulty, we protest that 
they should not treat us in the same fashion. 
But what do they know of the reasons for our 
demands ? What do they know of constituted 
authority.? A difficulty is to them something 
to be overcome. We owe them proof of our 
right to control, and if not proof, then a 
convincing persuasiveness which shall be to 
them as good as proof. We need not be in- 
dignant because children will not learn from 
our experience, will not take our word for 
it that this or that is good or bad for them. 
They have no reason whatever for believing 
us, except such as their very brief previous 
experience of us may have afforded. If in 
that brief experience we have told them with 
assurance many things which proved after- 



120 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

wards not to be so, they certainly have no 
cause to trust us. All their own instincts 
prompt them to make their own experiments. 
Nothing but over-ruling proof of the wisdom 
of our advice will make them care to be 
directed by us. 

We ought to have a child's affection, ad- 
miration, and confidence, before we can be of 
full use to him. His desire is part and parcel 
of his general fund of feeling and goes with the 
current of his other emotions. What he loves, 
admires, and trusts, he will desire to follow. 
For with affection in all primitive minds 
comes allegiance; with admiration comes 
imitation; with confidence comes at least a 
measure of obedience. It is not hard to win 
him in these ways, for he is very inexperienced 
and uncritical. Affection comes of itself. 
We have only to keep it. A child loves, out 
of the fullness of his heart, everything and 
everybody that comes into his life if he is not 
forced to fear them. With his love goes his 
admiration. He knows no difference between 
these; what he loves he admires, what he 
admires he loves. He will admire any sym- 



DISCIPLINE 121 

pathethic person who is in power over him. 
To hold his affection safe, gifts and favors 
will not serve. It asks sympathy, not kind- 
ness. There must be a mutual sharing of 
interests, his and ours. Then admiration will 
remain if only he sees that steadily as we urge 
him to good behavior, we try even harder to 
compass it in ourselves. Confidence, how- 
ever, requires in us justice and good sense. 
If in the event we prove to be usually right, 
he will give us his confidence, — his trust, 
that is to say, not his intimacy. 

Having his affection, admiration, and con- 
fidence on our side, we can then count upon 
numerous other allies: his natural love of 
being praised, of doing things the right way, 
and of seeing things come out right; his 
childish readiness to be interested and pleased ; 
and his native capacity to see reason when his 
temper is cool and the event remote. A great 
help, too, is his plentiful lack of preconceived 
ideas. And we hold in our own hands the 
cogent power of suggestion and of courtesy. 
With these numerous allies, we can over- 
come all that is troublesome in his native 



122 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

independence. Independence itself is so val- 
uable that we must not even try to conquer 
it. It must be kept healthy and in happy case. 
The second obstacle is conservatism. One 
might also call it mental inertia. It springs 
from the human mind's incapacity to turn 
instantaneously, and to act immediately, upon 
unexpected material. This inertia gives the 
child an instinctive preference for the familiar 
over the strange, and enormously increases 
his desire to do what he is doing rather than 
what he is told to do. Added to this inertia 
is the actual time that it takes an inexperienced 
mind to translate heard words into its own 
thought and then to translate that again into 
action to fit the original words. Herein lies 
the chief part of children's reluctance to obey 
even a beloved mother. In grown people 
this inertia often takes days, weeks, months, 
years to overcome. It is an invaluable ele- 
ment of human nature, and needs only to be 
understood to be respected. It must be met 
with patience, courtesy, and reasonableness; 
and its disadvantages must be obviated by 
instigations to promptness and alertness. 



DISCIPLINE 123 

The third obstacle, personal temperament, 
has to be overcome in each child separately. 
Unless we study it and adapt our treatment 
to it, we shall remain remote from the child 
and shall give him little help in conquering 
his world. Not only the same method can- 
not be applied to different children, but no 
special procedure can be held to rigidly with 
any one child. We must keep our observa- 
tion and invention constantly at work. 

The last obstacle is the comic element, 
changeableness. It is the element of phases 
and tricks. The child progresses through 
innumerable phases, mental and physical, 
and he takes on external tricks one after 
another, which have small relation to his 
inner self. These are all produced by tem- 
porary mental and physical conditions. We 
must learn to distinguish between what a 
child will outgrow, and what he must out- 
learn. We worry over how to conquer a 
child's temper, and suddenly, one day, it 
disappears. We are almost frantic because 
a child persists in holding its mouth open. 
Then the trick vanishes before we have de- 



124 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

cided what to do about it. We should take 
as little obvious notice as possible of such 
things, and recognize within ourselves the 
humor of them. When their tendency or 
immediate result is so serious that we must 
take oflScial notice of them, we should still 
never treat them as on a par in ethics with 
really responsible faults. This obstacle is 
simply a troublesome manifestation of the 
invaluable power of reflex action. 

In fine, whether the obstacle be independ- 
ence, inertia, temperament, or trick, we can 
never reach his desire and direct it toward the 
most enduring things, unless we respect in his 
nature the characteristics which give us most 
trouble. They are obstacles to be provided 
against, not obstructions to be destroyed in 
the child. Recognizing them by no means 
does away with the necessity for discipline; 
it simply affects the method of discipline. 

In ourselves, there are obstacles which we 
seldom recognize and consequently seldom 
guard against. We do know that we have 
faults, and in our dealings with a friend or 
stranger, we try to recognize and allow for 



DISCIPLINE 125 

them. In dealing with our child, however, 
we habitually ignore them, and expect him 
to assume that what we say and do is right. 
And we all too often assume it ourselves. Yet 
we are very like the children. We, too, love 
our own way. We, too, are stiff-minded. We 
have our own unseasonable moods and sense- 
less tricks, and moreover, on top of it all, an 
acquired sense of dignity which acts as a bar 
between us and the children. If we deserve 
their respect, they will give it. We need not 
concern ourselves so much about their be- 
havior toward us as about our own toward 
them. We must treat them with courtesy. 
They are our equals in everything but ex- 
perience, and we must regard ourselves as 
appointed to give them the results of expe- 
rience quickly, thoroughly, and beneficially, 
often rigorously, never roughly nor stupidly. 
This close resemblance between ourselves 
and the children should never be out of mind. 
Children are nothing but ourselves in smaller 
size and a little different proportions. Yet 
we continually make the mistake of thinking 
of them as apart from those of older growth. 



126 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

If in speaking about their peculiarities we 
sometimes said "we" instead of "they," 
comprehension of them in many ways would 
open to us. If we thought of them as other 
people instead of as children, we should 
treat them more acceptably. We make the 
same mistake with almost all subordinates. 
Persons whose power compels our respect, 
we instinctively treat as we would be treated. 
But the further they get from equal power, 
the less we treat them as equals in humanity. 
It is wholesome to regard the children in this 
larger light as members of society like our- 
selves, for it would be hard to find a parent, 
no matter how gentle, sincere, and conscien- 
tious, who is not every day guilty of the sins 
of injustice and stupidity. We are unjust be- 
cause we have the immunity of tyrants, and 
we are stupid because we are not on our 
guard against it. It is the more highly im- 
portant that we keep strict watch over our- 
selves because, after all, the chief part of a 
child's moral training comes from seeing his 
parents try to do right. 

Another way in which it is well to think of 



DISCIPLINE 127 

the child as if he were one's self is in realiz- 
ing his own idea of his own acts. We see his 
acts in their results. He sees them in their 
causes. His acts have not the same mean- 
ing for him that they have for us. We can- 
not impress upon ourselves too carefully that 
disobedience, naughtiness, untruthfulness, are 
simply our names for actions of the child. 
They show how the act strikes us. They 
indicate our desire and our outlook; that is, 
the objective aspect. If the child were giv- 
ing names, he would choose some word that 
would indicate his desire and his outlook, the 
springs of action in his own mind ; that is, the 
subjective aspect, a very different thing. We 
say, quite truly, that some act of his was diso- 
bedient to us. He says that it was agreeable 
to him. We say it was naughty; he says it 
was funny. We say it was untruthful ; he says 
it was necessary or perhaps mistaken. Or 
his cause of difference may be even simpler. 
He may have wholly misinterpreted a word 
that he used or we used. The child who 
merges the two words ask and tell will often 
seem impertinent or unreasonable. "I told 



128 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

you to pick up my ball. Grandmother!" 
means to him "I asked you." In so many 
ways is his adjustment to the world made 
difficult by the very nature of things. It is 
our part to simplify, hasten, and perfect the 
adjustment, by discipline. 

It takes time and careful thought from him 
before he can see himself as others see him, 
before he can gain social consciousness and 
learn to see his acts objectively. The power 
to picture one's self as being a someone else to 
other people, as simply one of a goodly com- 
pany just as those others are whom we can 
see, — this power of imagining one's self from 
the outside, — is not natural. It is acquired 
laboriously, and in the end is at the very best 
only partially acquired. We remain always to 
ourselves intimate spirits, with troublesome, 
half-comprehended bodies; whereas other 
people are visible bodies with an obvious pro- 
pensity for crossing our path. The kindred, 
invisible spirit within them we only slowly 
apprehend. With that apprehension comes 
the desire to be kind, and the readiness to 
subordinate our own convenience. In like 



DISCIPLINE 129 

way, the present is all we are naturally aware 
of. Only slowly do we learn the lessons of the 
past and the value of the future. And only 
with this knowledge comes the power to have 
foresight. This foresight joining with that 
sympathetic imagination which can conceive 
of others as having needs and rights, builds 
up a preference for good rather than bad 
behavior; and finally there issues forth in us 
self-government with a moral purpose. It is 
to simplify and hasten these developments 
that discipline exists. 

Sometimes a little child seems to have 
brought this social and moral sense with him 
into the world; but even such a rare child 
comes unadjusted. If he is left unaided, he 
promptly adopts the easiest behavior toward 
his universe, and he invents the most obvious 
explanations for its treatment of him. If he 
chances to be the child of a savage, he will re- 
main in this first simple state for the rest of 
his life. If, however, his surroundings are 
civilized, he will year by year come to adopt 
civilized methods and to understand more 
or less clearly their purpose and advisability. 



130 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

He will grasp first the simple, then the more 
advanced methods. This process we may 
call following in his development the advance 
of the race through the ages, if we like that 
way of putting it. Perhaps a better way, 
though less striking, is to say that, since all 
children throughout the ages have come into 
the world in the same wholly unadjusted con- 
dition, therefore no child can avoid going 
through the same general process of adjust- 
ment that his predecessors followed, always 
having to add whatever new advance has been 
made by the adult generation immediately 
before him. 

The civilized child, the outcome of devel- 
oped parents, is not, however, at birth in the 
exact condition of a savage child. His mental 
faculties and his capacity for mental reaction 
are much more highly developed. And if the 
families from which he springs are rising, he 
is more developed in this way than his parents 
were at birth. He is a little prophecy, and in 
potentiality is ahead of his times. He is ready 
for the next step up. 

Practically what we owe to a child, then, 



DISCIPLINE 131 

is not so much to recognize his likeness to a 
savage as to recognize his Hkeness to the 
coming man. We need to help him from the 
very beginning to understand about managing 
his environment in the most advisable ways 
known to the civilized world. The child of 
to-day is the man of to-morrow in two ways. 
He will be a man to-morrow and have to 
carry the responsibility of to-morrow's prob- 
lems. And he is to-day rife with the powers of 
to-morrow's man. He can appreciate to the 
full all the beneficence of discoveries which 
it has taken the race so long to amass. Little 
children, for instance, enjoy and reap the 
benefit of a tactful, kind treatment of one 
another quite as much as grown people do, 
and they can learn it very rapidly from sug- 
gestion, though they could not invent it for 
themselves. Babies of six months can begin 
to learn self-control. Boys of ten can take a 
quiet stand for decency. There is no need to 
wait. They can begin at once to be highly 
civilized ethically, and to be thankful for it. 
Then having learned all of good behavior 
that the race has to teach, they can spend 



132 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

their own full manhood strength in discov- 
ering new nobilities of conduct. So the pro- 
phecy of the young life may be fulfilled and 
its potentiality become a reality of service. 

In the light of these considerations, disci- 
pline becomes an effort to give the child a good 
start, to give him the best of opportunities, by 
helping him to self-control and steady moral 
judgment ; and also to make the child agree- 
able to himself and others as he " goes along." 

In brief, then, the problem of discipline is 
triple: to reach the child's desire, to form 
his judgment, and to meet an immediate 
situation. In order to reach his desire, we 
must get his good- will. In order to form his 
judgment, we must give him clear reasons 
and make him understand cause and effect. 
At the same time, in order to meet the im- 
mediate situation and give him continuing 
practice in self-government and consideration 
for others, we must enforce good behavior, 
even against his desire and without his judg- 
ment if necessary. By right discipline he will 
gain social consciousness even if he does not 
gain social understanding. 



DISCIPLINE 133 

MAXIMS OF DISCIPLINE 

Rules and maxims, counsels and regula- 
tions, have but small significance compared 
to the experience which they represent. As 
a handbook of botany is to a landscape, so 
must a manual of morals be to a life. Yet 
botany has its service, and if one were sure 
that maxims would be taken to enlighten 
rather than to determine conduct, to suggest 
rather than to direct action, one would not 
find the setting down of maxims so repugnant. 
At the risk of misuse, the following are held 
out, — to be read, considered, and then for- 
gotten as to all but their spirit. 

UNIVERSAL RULES OF CONDUCT 

A. universal rule is one which has 
no exception either from respect of 
persons or from consideration of 
circumstances. It is always valid. 
There can he only subjective reasons 
for not following it. 
1. Never be Annoyed or Reproachful. 
Annoyance and reproach betray a petty 



134 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

personal view of the offense and give room 
for suspicion that a less selfish mood would 
not have seen offense at all. Meet temper 
or obstinacy with firmness, not with temper. 
Meet thoughtlessness with gravity and kind- 
ness. Meet all with decision. Be emphatic, 
be impatient, be indignant, be peremptory, 
be angry, if occasion calls; but do not be 
pettish, reproachful, annoyed. It is the child's 
mistaken conduct which calls forth your pro- 
test, not his causing you discomfort. 

It is a real mistake to be always pleasant 
and gentle with a child. Thereby it never 
learns how others feel at its misbehavior. 
Neither is it well to be "grieved," often. 
This, like annoyance, betrays a personal 
point of view. It is a secondary result of their 
naughtiness only. Do not hesitate to behave 
the way you primarily feel, on occasion, pro- 
vided you have rightful provocation, and the 
mood is likely to reach the child. 

2. Meet all Things with Latent Hu- 
mor. Humor is the power to see and be 
amused at the persistent contradiction that 



DISCIPLINE 135 

lies in every situation. Whenever two minds 
join issue, there is this comic element of coun- 
ter currents. Our own shortcomings, our in- 
capacities and imbecilities, are always funny. 
One need not laugh if it be not suitable, but 
one may always smile inwardly. 

3. Be in No Hurry. Give time for the 
other mind to receive your words, and, after 
that, to slow up, to stop, and then to reverse 
its motion. Then give a choice whenever pos- 
sible. Your abiding purpose is to increase the 
number of sensible, independent people; it is 
not to get your own special plan fulfilled in 
this particular instance in your own peculiar 
way. 

4. Lay No Burden of Trust. Trust 
each one only so far as is serviceable, not so 
far as seems possible. Superfluous trust is 
merely temptation, and it is unjust to lay such 
a burden. Life swarms with temptations. We 
should not unnecessarily multiply them by 
asking of a child more self-restraint than he 
has yet fully learned. It is fair to trust a 
child of ten not to run away, but it is not 



136 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

fair so to trust a child of three. It is not fair 
to leave "yellow journals" round and then 
tell a child of any age that you trust him not 
to read them. The temptation is too strong 
and constant. 

5. Set a High Standard of Perform- 
ance. The innermost desire of every human 
being is for perfection. What truly is perfec- 
tion, only judgment can show; but we all love 
perfection as we understand it; we admire 
efficiency, we take pride in our own accom- 
plishments. This is a universal possession 
of the race; a love of perfection lies down at 
the bottom of every one of us. Other tenden- 
cies may overlay and conceal it, such as that 
inertia of mind or body which is called lazi- 
ness, or that deficient judgment which is called 
a lack of proper standard. But always, even 
though dormant, there is the love of perfection, 
ready to be reached and used. 

A high standard of performance is a boon 
to the possessor and to his world. Inculcate 
promptness, accuracy, perfection, no matter 
how far short of this ideal the individual 



DISCIPLINE 137 

will always come. The world wants men who 
do their work right the first time. No matter 
how much we sympathize with the children's 
very human wish for laxness, we must not be 
lenient to their disadvantage. 

So we must not teach them to do things the 
easiest way, " to save themselves trouble.'* 
This fosters laziness. The line of the least 
resistance is the natural course of mind as 
well as matter. We need not draw attention 
to its beauties. Recommend instead the line 
of greatest effectiveness. 

6. Guide, do not Force the Mind. 
Guide or restrain the mind, but do not thwart 
it. Remember the mind is to be reached 
and influenced. If you wish to hold control, 
run with it, in the same direction, as a man 
catches a horse. If you run counter, there will 
be a collision of wills, and something is sure 
to be injured. It may be the child's feelings, 
it may be his good- will ; and you will be lucky 
if you escape a fall yourself into ill temper 
or defeat. 



138 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

GENERAL RULES OF CONDUCT 
A general rule is one that is usually 
valid but has exceptions, so that its 
application requires judgment. 

7. Do NOT Use Physical Force. Re- 
member it is the mind, not the body, which 
is to be reached and influenced. He must 
learn to govern his body by his own will, 
and all independent children do prefer to 
direct their own steps. Let your motto be 
"Hands off." Illustrate just authority by 
controlling your own actions, and then expect 
the same control of him. 

8. Do not Punish. Punishment is the 
infliction of an extraneous arbitrary pain of 
body or mind, in order to make the offender 
remember not to repeat the offense. Its result 
is apt at the best to be an unreasoning ac- 
quiescence; at the worst, rebellion and hatred 
of authority. It can never avoid being an ob- 
trusion between the deed and the real reason 
for not doing it. Therefore, if there be any 
other ejfficient way to make the offender re- 
member not to repeat the offense, avoid pun- 



DISCIPLINE 139 

ishments. They irritate or subdue. Prescribed 
punishments — fixed penalties — are especi- 
ally to be avoided, because a child is able to 
reckon the cost of disobedience and decide 
that the forbidden pleasure is worth it. They 
think, too, that the punishment measures the 
enormity of the offense, and that if they do 
not much dislike the penalty the crime cannot 
be very bad. A child should know that dis- 
comfort or suffering of some sort is sure to 
follow willful disobedience, but he should not 
be able to foresee exactly its kind or degree. 

When master and offender are both un- 
reasonable, punishment is necessarily fre- 
quent. The more reason reigns, the less the 
need for punishment; so that children who 
are brought up under the rule of reason from 
the beginning are seldom punished. 

Punishment is sometimes necessary. It is 
often necessary, for instance, in the cure of 
superficial tricks, if the tricks are persistent 
and need curing. Tricks are undesirable 
ways of doing things, which spring from 
superficial reactions of various sorts, and 
have no immediate connection with the 



140 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

personality. They are involuntary, and so 
dissociated from desire that they cannot be 
reached through the avenues of mind and 
will. It is for such things that swift, sharp 
punishments are often necessary. But where 
one has always had charge of the child, cor- 
poral punishment should not be necessary. 
It is always a makeshift, a stop-gap that blunts 
the perceptions of both parent and child. 
Disagreeable tastes and various other physi- 
cal discomforts are sometimes a good sub- 
stitute, when they bear some relation to the 
offense. 

If one plan of cure fails to work, try another. 
No matter how sensible the plan is or how 
often it has worked before, if it does not work 
this time there is something wrong with it in 
this case. 

In lieu of punishment, there is 

explanation, which is the appeal to reason; 

persuasion, which is the appeal to affection and kind- 
ness; 

non-interference, which is the appeal to nature and is 
often excellently wise; for many acts left to them- 
selves bring about immediate results which are ex- 
ceedingly unpleasant to their perpetrator; 



DISCIPLINE 141 

" deus-ex-machina" which is the supplying of pseudo- 
natural results, such as depriving him of his dessert if 
he dawdles over his meat, sending him out of the 
room if he makes too much noise, etc. ; 

hygienic method, which is the removal of physical 
causes for " naughtiness," such as putting him to nap 
if he is fretful, letting him run three times round 
the garden if he is cross, opening the windows if 
he cries too much, etc. 

9. (a) Do NOT Demand Implicit, Imme- 
diate Obedience to New or Unexpected 
Demands. Except in matters of routine, 
where by previous experience and habit the 
mind is already prepared to feel the fresh idea 
is a familiar one, time must be given for ad- 
justment. New ideas, unexpected changes 
of thought, cannot be acted upon suddenly. 
Time must be given for translation of words 
into thoughts and back into action, with 
all the various intervening brain processes. 
Some minds are very slow in such adjust- 
ment; some, very quick, but none is in- 
stantaneous. 

It is also well to lead the mind to the new 
idea slowly, beginning with what is familiar 
and acceptable and then linking each new 



142 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

idea to one which has already been made 
famihar. For instance, Jack who i^ all ready 
to go on a delightful walk must be kept at 
home because an unknown cousin has come 
to see the family. "Wait," says the mother, 
"do you know who has come? It is a very 
nice cousin that you have never seen. He 
lives out where the cow-boys are. So if you 
put off your walk, you will hear all about it." 
This, instead of the curt information, "You 
can't go out. A strange cousin has come. 
Take off your things." Some people object 
that this makes obedience too easy and plea- 
sant. A child they think should obey cheer- 
fully, without asking for reasons. But that 
is a virtue which he will never need when he 
is grown. Grown people are almost never 
called upon to change their course suddenly 
without any understanding of the reasons. 
We first understand and then act, — much 
against our will and desire, it may be, but 
always for comprehensible cause. Children 
must give prompt obedience if necessary, but 
there is no need of multiplying these uncom- 
fortable occasions. How uncomfortable they 



DISCIPLINE 143 

are any one knows who has set out for a 
day's pleasure and found at the pier that the 
boat has stopped running! 

(b) Demand Immediate, Implicit Obe- 
dience IN Customary Matters. Every one 
knows how hard it is to accept reversals 
pleasantly. So a habit of cheerful obedience 
in youth is necessary in order that one may 
learn how to yield gracefully and easily when 
one cannot have one's own way. It is also 
necessary in order that the ordinary course of 
life may proceed promptly and comfortably 
and in order that sudden emergencies may 
find the child entirely subservient to quick 
directions. In obedience also lie the founda- 
tions of faith. 

This rule cannot be enforced very early. 
To a child under three, all demands are new, 
unexpected, and unaccustomed. In cases of 
emergency he has to be taken up bodily. 
Neither should the rule be enforced late. In a 
child over thirteen, unselfishness and reason- 
ableness should have taken the place of 
obedience. A request or a representation 
should be all that is necessary. 



144 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

10. Do NOT Explain or Persuade at the 
Time. Explain before the moment of com- 
mand or after the incident is closed, not in 
medias res, while disobedience and rebellion 
are regnant in the other mind. Reason when 
he is a reasonable being, unbiased by the vivid 
pressure of passing desire. 

Persuade before a command. If persua- 
sion follows a command, it usually betrays 
v^eakness and is consequently apt to meet 
refusal; certainly it will breed disrespect. 

Therefore, command but seldom and mostly 
in matters of course. When you command 
exact obedience. 

11. Say "Do," not "Don't." "Don't" 
simply stops action. It suggests no counter 
action. "Don't run your head forward!" 
offers no aim to be accomplished. "Do draw 
your chin in," offers an ideal to be pursued. 
This follows the general principle that the 
excellent, not the execrable, is suitable ma- 
terial with which to stock the mind ; that hy- 
giene, not pathology, is fit for general study; 
that it is purposes to be pursued, not fates to 
be shunned, that urge us to good behavior. 



DISCIPLINE 145 

12. Do NOT Present the Alternative. 
When one course of action is entirely the 
most desirable and the child is not able to 
see the full grounds of choice, do not give him 
a choice. Let the choice be between two ways 
of doing the one necessary thing. For in- 
stance, "We are going home now." "No, I 
don't want to go home." "I know it. I am 
sorry, but we must go. You would like to 
stay, I know. Shall we go past Charlie's 
house or round by the blacksmith's shop.^'* 

Nevertheless, in all matters which come 
within the range of his entire understanding, 
a child should be allowed and encouraged to 
use his own judgment and to act on his own 
initiative. Though his intellect does not 
reach full development till many years later, 
he has a meagre supply of it which is fully 
adequate to the demand of his legitimate 
amount of responsibility. 

13. Do NOT Argue. Explain or persuade, 
but do not argue. Argument is for conversion, 
not for action. 

14. Learn to be Silent. There is much 
power in silence. When the child knows that 



146 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

you are displeased, and why, then there is no 
increased power in words. So long as you 
talk, he can talk back. 

15. Do NOT Snub. Snubbing paralyzes 
the mental forces and checks the flow of natural 
feeling on both sides. It is most injurious to 
healthy development. 

16. Do NOT Nag. Nagging numbs the 
mental sensibilities. It makes the receipt of 
reproach familiar, and the child becomes either 
indifferent or discouraged. 

17. Do NOT Appeal to Base Motives. 
The base motives are fear, vanity, jealousy, 
selfishness, laziness, and their congenial fel- 
lows. An appeal to fear encourages weakness ; 
an appeal to vanity fosters conceit; and so 
through the list. These baser motives are 
operative and very potent in us all; but the 
more they are ignored the nobler the race will 
become. 

18. Do not Bribe or Threaten. State 
the resulting benefit of acquiescence or the 
resulting pain of refusal, if necessary, but do 
not offer extraneous arbitrary goods or ills as 
a sequence of any conduct. Bribes appeal to 



DISCIPLINE 147 

the base motive of greed, the desire to get 
something more than one's due. Threats ap- 
peal to the base motive of fear, the desire to 
avoid what is unpleasant, and the impulse to 
reckon the cost. 

19. Do NOT Reward. A reward is some 
desired good following as an artificial sequence 
but not as a consequence upon right conduct. 
Thus rewards must always be an obtrusion 
between the deed and the real reason for doing 
it. Therefore, if the real reason can possibly 
be made apparent and attractive to the child, 
let that suffice instead of a reward. If not, let 
the gratification of those who do understand 
be sufficient to please him. A habit of expect- 
ing artificial rewards clouds the purposes and 
misleads the will of a child. 

The more reason reigns, the less need is 
there for rewards. 

Rewards are perhaps sometimes necessary 
to overcome a persistent trick or habit, such 
as slowness, absent-mindedness, or the like. 
But a child who from the beginning sees great 
pride taken in good performance, seldom 
needs any other spur than his own proud 



148 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

satisfaction and the commendation of those 
whose commendation he values, — in addi- 
tion to the good of the gain itself. 

COUNSELS OF PERFECTION 
20. Avoid Lies. (a) Avoid lies from 
yourself. The only excusable excuse for lying 
is def enselessness : we may sometimes believe 
that we are driven into lying to those who 
have the better of us. But lying to subor- 
dinates has no excuse; it is we who have 
the better of them: they are already in our 
power. Some persons say that they never lie 
except to children. By this they mean, of 
course, that they imagine a lie to a child is 
sometimes defensible because it seems neces- 
sary. But this is a policy which arises from 
timidity rather than wisdom. There is always 
some way of telling the truth which is fitted to 
the child. Anything, little or big, which gives 
to any human creature a mistaken idea about 
anything in the universe is an injury to him. 
The more accurate his ideas of things, the 
more fully and wisely he can live his life. 
Moreover, since we are very particular that 



DISCIPLINE 149 

children shall tell the truth to us, and since 
we find it exceedingly inconvenient and exas- 
perating if they do not, it is as well to show 
them by our own example what we mean by 
always telling the truth. 

(6) Furthermore, do not tempt the child 
to lie by asking direct questions in difficult 
situations, or by showing anger, indignation, or 
amazement over his faults. 

Do not give him the lie, by hasty contra- 
diction or by deliberate unbelief. A child's 
mind is even less clear than a grown person's, 
and he often does not know that he has not 
told the truth. Sometimes he is telling the 
truth according to his idea of the meaning of 
your words or of his. Be patient and search 
carefully. Remember that in the matter of 
truth-telling, though the will be willing the 
mind is often weak. The natural, untrained 
mind cannot always distinguish between 
thought and reality. The natural mind be- 
lieves whatever it thinks ; and believes that 
saying a thing is so, is the same as its being 
so. Help the child to learn to see the truth, to 
distinguish between thoughts or wishes and 



150 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

facts. Above all, do not confuse his mind 
by frightening him about it all. Never 
frighten him, and always help him to un- 
derstand what is the true answer and how 
earnestly you wish to have him find it. 
Teach him that the truth is more important 
and sacred than any possible personal con- 
sideration. 

21. DiSCOUKAGE SUPEEFLUOUS HaBITS. 

We are all insufficiently adaptable to cir- 
cumstances. We need to distinguish more 
clearly and readily between necessary and 
merely convenient or accidental customs. So it 
is undesirable to multiply the number of things 
which seem necessary to a child. Whenever 
you possibly can, tell him it does not matter 
which way he does this or that. Let him 
realize that there are often a dozen equally 
good ways. Discourage his always putting 
on the right boot first, always taking his 
spoon in his right hand, always being sung 
to at night. Mere conveniences and pleasures 
must not be petrified into duties and neces- 
sities. To make a general rule into a uni- 
versal rule, stiffens us. 



DISCIPLINE 151 

22. Teach Him to Bear Disappointment. 
Many persons conceal coming events from 
children, because the things may after all 
not happen and then disappointment is so 
hard to bear. Of course, if disappointment 
is thus treated as an experience to be avoided 
in every possible way, then disappointment will 
become an unbearable pain. But life is a series 
of disappointments, as it is a series of fulfill- 
ments and a series of surprises. Children should 
learn to meet disappointment as one of the in- 
teresting problems. They should grow accus- 
tomed to turn defeat to victory by filling every 
disheartening gap with something which 
could not otherwise have been had. If one 
is left at a junction by a delayed train, let him 
visit the sights of the town, or talk with a na- 
tive, or write an unusual letter, — instead of eat- 
ing apples of annoyance in the waiting-room. 

23. Aim to have the Child Self-aware 
BUT NOT Self-conscious. Let your com- 
ments on his conduct be enlightening. Make 
the general situation clear, but do not focus 
his attention on a detached characteristic. 
What we commonly call self-consciousness is 



152 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

an exaggerated consciousness of some part or 
aspect of ourselves. In order to lose self -con- 
sciousness, we must see ourselves in the large 
and as one of many who have a common na- 
ture. We must become less conscious of our- 
selves as separate individuals and more aware 
of ourselves as companions. Thus we become 
less self-conscious, although we become more 
self -a ware. Accustom the child, by appeals to 
his sympathetic imagination, to realize himself 
as having an outward external existence, which 
is visible to other people as they are visible to 
him, and which gives them their only know- 
ledge of him. Accustom him to realize that 
other people have an inner invisible source of 
action entirely apart from him, as his is apart 
from them and invisible to them. So create 
a spontaneous understanding of the need for 
kindness in order to understand others, and 
for self-expression, in order that others may 
understand him. 

Enlarge in all other ways, also, his rela- 
tions with the world. Accustom him to realize 
the future and to remember his past, and then 
to realize the distant past. This gives him a 



DISCIPLINE 153 

larger basis from which to judge himself and 
other people, and by which to test all new and 
old ideas of conduct. 

24. Avoid Competition and Comparison. 
Forced competition leads invariably to dis- 
couragement in those who must invariably 
come out behind, and to conceit in those who 
just as inevitably come out ahead. The 
winners are always those who have native 
talent. They deserve no credit for distancing 
the others who work with acquired powers, 
yet they get all the praise which really belongs 
to some one who made a great effort working 
against large odds. Competition is whole- 
some only in secondary things and between 
those who are evenly matched in talent. 

Comparisons between things and persons 
lead to various evils. ''Which do you like 
better, candy or ice cream.?" is a most usual 
sort of question. But it is really excessively 
silly. "Both" is the only rational answer. 
To ask such baseless questions of the inex- 
perienced only gives them a belief that su- 
periority and inferiority, a grading of some 
sort, must exist in all sorts of places where 



154 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

there is really no ground of choice at all. It 
leads them to suppose that one quality is 
better to possess than another. The conse- 
quence is that we all bring up with us into 
adult life an impression, indefensible but 
ineradicable, that there is a better and a 
worse in everything. We are stuffed with 
groundless prepossessions and prejudices. 

25. Avoid Criticism, (a) Avoid criticism 
of others in the child's hearing. He is entirely 
incapable of judging character, its causes and 
excuses. He is, and ought to be, uncompro- 
mising, intolerant, wholly external in his 
standards. Good is good and bad is bad for 
him. The shortcomings and peculiarities of 
his older friends and relatives and neighbors 
are none of his business. The best of them 
are to be loved by him and admired. This 
sort of hero worship is essential to forming 
his ideals. He must have tangible, visible em- 
bodiments of virtue to solidify his ideas upon. 
Only later can he learn the meaning of arche- 

(6) Avoid criticism of the child in the child's 
hearing. Unless you deliberately intend it to 



DISCIPLINE 155 

serve some definite good for him, do not let 
him hear from you any remarks about his 
character, his talents, his faults, his appear- 
ance, or his health. Leave him the blessed 
immunity of unconsciousness, and the whole- 
someness of untroubled growth toward un- 
perplexed ideals. 

(c) Avoid criticism of the world in general 
in the child's hearing. Do not talk before him 
of sickness, accident, crime, private affairs, 
adult perplexities, of any sort. The reason 
for this is substantially the same as for (a). 

26. Keep Pace with the Child's Mind. 
Every child rapidly outgrows, or ought rap- 
idly to outgrow, his previous mental states 
and his previous occupations. He needs to 
be freshly noticed, and not to be treated as if 
he were still in last month's state of mind. 
As new power develops in him and new ex- 
perience broadens him he sees himself dif- 
ferently, and needs to have others see him 
differently, too. 

Also all children need full occupation. As 
well-used powers grow stronger, they can be 
used more rapidly and less frequently. There 



156 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

is room for new acquisition. The child who 
constantly asks "What shall I do?" or who 
is constantly without occupation, is he whose 
available occupations have become too easy for 
him, and who is not bred by experience into 
the knowledge that there is surpassing interest 
in doing what is creative and a little difficult. 

27. Ignore Much. Beware of over-em- 
phasizing little faults and little duties. Often 
by over-emphasis, so much attention is centred 
upon a fault that it is intensified, — as a bi- 
cyclist increases his chances of running into 
something by thinking nervously about it. 
Likewise, little duties, desirable habits, are 
readily magnified into moral obligations by a 
learner, as the early Jews made a religion of 
their health regulations. One often sees a fine 
young girl who believes a courteous note to 
be more important than a truthful tongue. 
Human nature has a tendency to make each 
injunction moral, and to give most weight to 
those it hears most often! 

28. Practice Much; Preach Little. 
Words rapidly become cant to the hearer, 
even if they remain sincere in the speaker. 



DISCIPLINE 157 

Ideals which one discovers for one's self 
arise in the intellect and thence permeate 
one's whole nature. Ideals received in words 
from another may never get further than 
the memory. Say little of your ideals to a 
child, and that most soberly and reverently. 
Let him see clearly that you know that it is 
only deeds which prove sincerity. Prove your 
principles by your practice, not by your in- 
sistent desire that he shall practice them. 
Then when he discovers for himself what 
they are, they will be very convincing to him; 
the more that as a child he could not under- 
stand abstractions. 

29. Do NOT Stand on your Dignity. 
It is salutary to carry with you always the 
supposition that you are possibly in the 
wrong. Then, when you prove to be actually 
in the wrong, you easily take the frank stand 
so provocative of confidence, and freely ac- 
knowledge your mistake. Apologies are right 
and useful to make, even to little children. 
(Excuses are another thing. The man who 
is full of excuses is generally not full of re- 
pentance.) 



158 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

30. Bear no Malice. Do not visit your 
displeasure at one piece of conduct upon all 
else that he does, for a day or a week. Do 
not seem to be sulkily harboring a grudge as 
if he had done it to injure you and you were 
angry. Treat each error on its own merits, 
and let him see that you regard him as of 
more importance than any one of his deeds. 

31. Use your Best Mood. Try not to 
discipline a child unless you are satisfied with 
your mood. First summon your own best 
state of mind, and then face the child. Your 
mood will be your best ally. 

In the same spirit, if he confesses to some 
misdeed, do not treat him just as if you had 
found out the wrong yourself. A confession 
is a sign of repentance. It may be selfish 
repentance, a mere desire to avoid the un- 
comfortable consequences of his misdeed. 
It may be generous repentance, a strong wish 
that he might undo the harm which he has 
done. In any case he needs to be handled 
in accordance with his state of mind. Non- 
repentance, selfish repentance, and generous 
repentance present three different problems; 



DISCIPLINE 



159 



for discipline is not mere policing, the pro- 
tection of public interests ; it aims at personal 
assistance. 



OUTLINE 

UNIVERSAL RULES 



1. Annoyance 

2. Humor 

3. Hurry 



7. Force 

8. Punishment 

9. Obedience 

10. Explanation 
and Persuasion 

11. Forbidding 

12. Choice 



4. Trust 

5. High Standard 

6. Guidance 



GENERAL RULES 



13. Argument 

14. Silence 

15. Snubbing 

16. Nagging 

17. Motives 

18. Bribes and Threats 

19. Rewards 



COUNSELS OF PERFECTION 



20. Lying 26. 

21. Habits 27. 

22. Disappointment 28. 

23. Self-consciousness 29. 

24. Competition and Com- 
parison 30. 

25. Criticism 31. 



Keeping Pace 

Ignoring 

Practice and Preaching 

Dignity 

Bearing Malice 
Best Mood 



AMUSEMENTS 

The present well - recognized increase in 
nervous diseases indicates that we of these 
latest times are making some serious new 
mistakes in our way of life, that with all 
of our improvements through knowledge of 
bacteriology and hygiene, we are heedless of 
some essentials to steady health and rational 
life; we are habitually going counter to some 
necessities to full development. And this is 
true of all classes in the community. The 
increased tendency to neuritis, nervous pros- 
tration, and their fellows, heart-disease and 
insanity, is not confined to the rich or the 
idle, to the day's worker or the farmer's wife. 
Every community and occupation is attacked 
by it, but chiefly the dwellers in and near 
cities, who overwork their nerves and heart, 
and overtax their brains. Even the children 
show the strain. 

Before rapid transit was possible, when 



AMUSEMENTS 161 

horses trotted "two-forty" and letters went 
not more than fifty miles a day; before mul- 
tiphcity was thrust upon us ; when newspapers 
had four pages and big cities held only one 
hundred thousand people, then the powers of 
civilized man were suflBcient to meet the suc- 
cession of events that came before him, and 
he could choose wisely without needing much 
wisdom. His brain was adequate to his civili- 
zation, his nervous system was adjusted to it, 
and the muscles of his heart were equal to the 
demand that his mental activity made upon 
them. The life of children was easily and 
naturally uneventful. But our modern con- 
ditions supply perpetually perplexing and 
conflicting demands upon our time and atten- 
tion, our sympathy and our imagination. 

Many modern appliances, like the automobile and 
telephone, are so elaborate that their use demands 
close, steady, anxious attention. Most of them release 
us from one or another natural necessity and from the 
restriction of natural conditions. The railroad train 
releases us totally from the natural necessity of staying 
within walking distance of home; the newspaper re- 
leases us from the natural condition of knowing and 
caring little about distant persons and events. Large 



162 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

cities bring forty delightful acquaintances to our doors 
where one called upon our grandmothers; the mail- 
order department stores make it possible for the 
farmer's wife to procure any one of twenty different 
kinds of churns. With all this has come a new desire 
for beauty and brightness, pleasure and variety, born 
of the new opportunity in increased possessions and 
decreased drudgery. There is an eagerness for varied 
experiences and personal enlargement, for raciness and 
movement in life. The bewilderment of outward 
things, pleasing, complete, and desirable, has blurred 
our inner vision, and we lose sight of the real in the 
glare of the visible. A multitude of charms besets us 
and our children. 

The strain is growing to be more than the 
human constitution can bear. If the modern 
parent accepts for himself all that comes, he 
breaks down; if he sets no careful bounds for 
his children, the strain on them inevitably 
cripples their present and future health, hap- 
piness, and usefulness. He has to be perpet- 
ually making choice among the perplexing 
claims of conflicting opportunities. He is 
thus thrown upon the continual need of wis- 
dom. If he has no wise basis of choice, chaos 
in act and mind is the result, and nerve 
weakness in the rising generation. 



AMUSEMENTS 163 

Just principles of choice are essential to 
steady health and rational life ; they are neces- 
sities to full development. It is of such prin- 
ciples that we are heedless in our generation. 
Many of us do not know what they are, so 
that we innocently imagine that whatever is 
good is good for us, and do not even try to 
strike a balance between our powers and our 
efforts. We ask for no equality between our 
capacities and our ambitions, we establish 
no proportion between time and occupation, 
between attentive power and things to be 
interested in, for we understand neither 
elimination nor balance. In fine, we do not 
know how to make a wise choice. We have no 
recognized principles in such matters. 

This lack of principle is the fundamental 
obstacle to proper regulation of ourselves and 
our children in the matter of occupations and 
amusements. We dislike the very idea of 
rules and regulations. Too many of us have, 
consequently, daughters who agree with the 
girl of fifteen who declared she "wouldn't 
have a mother who would n't let her go to 
things." 



164 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

This dislike is characteristically American. 
The idea that all men are born equal has 
brought with it naturally the uneasy suspicion 
that no one man should control another. We 
are chary of talking of obedience; we avoid 
the words "master" and "servant." In this 
light, children seem to possess the personal 
right to choose their own pleasures and follow 
their own inclinations, being persons quite 
as truly as grown people are persons. So 
there has come about among respectable 
parents a curious irresponsibility toward the 
management of their children. Such parents 
seem to have learned little by experience, and 
they distrust and dislike the self-controlled 
practices of those who have learned from the 
experience of the race. In their American 
faith that there is always something better 
than what we now experience, they have 
thrown over conservatism in conduct, and 
seek to choose the ways of life afresh for them- 
selves and their children. They find the cus- 
toms and conventions of our forerunners 
clumsy and ill-fitted to the present time. 
They prefer a greater freedom of choice, but 



AMUSEMENTS 165 

they have not that judgment which is neces- 
sary to wise choice, that power to weigh 
values and to see large issues and future con- 
sequences. The result is that they practically 
give up the management of their children, 
leaving them almost without regulation. 

How necessary is judgment to conquering new con- 
ditions, and how essential is regulation, may be seen on 
a large scale in our American railroad management. 
Our railroads are nine times as dangerous to trainmen 
and twelve times as dangerous to passengers, as Eng- 
lish railroads are. An authority writing very recently 
says that oflScials "watch the trainmen to see if their 
shoes are blacked and their faces shaved," but that no 
adequate measures are taken to see whether men are 
not daily disobeying some vital rule for the safety of 
passengers. After discussing the slight advantage that 
safety appliances can give without faithful operators, 
he says, " We are thrown back upon the hope of better 
discipline and a more highly developed morale among 
the employees. Who is at fault for the lowered tone 
of the whole service?" He does not answer his own 
question, but the fault clearly lies in our American 
dislike to authority. We are weak masters and slack 
servants. We cannot make our country a safe place 
to live in unless we overcome this fault. In all matters 
where we are ultimately responsible for the action of 
others, we must be willing to lay down rules for them 
and insist upon obedience. We owe this to ourselves, to 



166 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

our servants, and to our children; we owe it to our 
country and to the progress of the race. Those whom 
we command may perhaps be as well fitted to rule 
as ourselves; but since we are in the master's position 
it is our duty to have true mastery, to rule well and 
thoroughly. 

In order to manage anything successfully, 
we need either a discriminating and uncom- 
promising use of general principles or a close 
adherence to the successful methods of others. 
There is no safety in trying to adopt wholly 
fresh ways all at once, for efl&cient new pro- 
cedures which shall avoid new errors, as well 
as escape the old ones, are hard to devise. 
The task needs ingenuity and exhaustless, 
patient fair-mindedness. It cannot be accom- 
plished in the happy-go-lucky humor so com- 
mon among us. We have an easy habit of 
believing that some new conduct would cer- 
tainly be better than the old ways ; and if we 
cannot see why it is not better, we conclude 
that it is. So we blunder ahead on the new 
course until it has itself taught us why not. 
We should avoid much trouble and frequent 
disaster if we studied the old customs long 
enough to get their secrets from them. 



AMUSEMENTS 167 

Consequently, it is well in the task of 
managing children not to throw over any old 
custom until we have discovered the end 
which it was meant to serve, the evil which 
it was designed to avoid, and the principle 
on which it was based. Customs are essen- 
tially the expression of long experience. The 
only safe substitute for them is the adoption 
of that general principle whose wisdom un- 
derlies each special custom. When we have 
discovered this, we may be able to devise 
another line of conduct which will serve the 
same end and avoid the same evil, without 
so clumsily interfering with irrelevant con- 
cerns and innocent pleasures. 

But we must know the hidden principles — 
not guess at them. If the results are to be 
successful, the principles must be real. It is 
not enough to formulate handy generalities 
and call them principles. Such easily ac- 
quired general principles, personal and emo- 
tional in their origin, are useless. Such are the 
notions that "Whatever is good is good for 
us," "If a thing is good, the more of it the 



168 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

better," "Children should be happy while 
they can," "If I see no harm in it, there is 
no harm in it for me," "I cannot see why I 
should not, so I guess I may," "Every one 
should be allowed to be happy in his own 
way," "He has got to do it sometime, so he 
may as well do it now." These are natural and 
amiable ideas; but they contain no thought 
and no wisdom. Parents who yield to them 
as guides lead their children into blind alleys. 
Two such generalities in particular, now 
widely accepted, are spreading their un- 
fortunate consequences all about us. The 
first is that children have a right to hap- 
piness, immediate and conscious and con- 
tinuous. The second is that children have a 
right to choose their own pleasures and to 
follow their own inclinations. Many parents 
who do not comprehend or do not trust the 
experience of the race, and are perhaps un- 
supplied with wholesome family traditions, 
habitually make choice of their children's 
amusements and occupations upon these two 
theories, which they mistakenly accept as 
sound general principles. 



AMUSEMENTS 169 

These two involve the other common Amer- 
ican misapprehension, that children are per- 
sons in quite the same sense that grown people 
are persons. Children are not small grown 
people; they are no more like grown people 
than flour is like cake or grape juice like wine. 
They are different in body and mind. Even 
their forms, though resemblant, are unlike; 
and though their language be the same, their 
thoughts are different. Parents who do not 
recognize this fact are blind to the real nature 
of life. They do not understand that child- 
hood is not only different from maturity but 
that it is itself composed of various stages, all 
differing and each one caused by a natural 
progressive change in bodily formation. 

Each change in bodily formation causes a 
change in brain ability, and a consequent 
alteration in desires and in objects of atten- 
tion. At the same time a change in mental 
possessions, brought about by accumulating 
experiences, influences the use of mental and 
physical powers, and consequently alters the 
tastes and interests. 



170 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

The infant is unfolding and learning to use 
its bodily powers; and its brain is becoming 
accustomed to make simple responses cor- 
rectly. Consequently its desires are exceed- 
ingly simple and physical, and its attention 
is taken up with action. In early childhood 
the body is changing from the roundness of 
infancy to the muscular activity of later child- 
hood. The brain is using its acquired powers 
to find out how its world is put together super- 
ficially, and consequently the chief desires 
are for occupation and the attention is taken 
up mostly with imitation. During later child- 
hood the body grows more compact and the 
various special abilities more marked. Dif- 
ferences of power in senses or muscles make 
increasing differences of ability between child 
and child. The brain grows more complex, 
and the interchange between its different 
parts is pretty well established. Its capacities 
grow more specific; consequently the desires 
become more individual, and the attention is 
largely fixed upon accumulating information 
about facts. During early youth the incipient 
powers of life-giving and life-producing de- 



AMUSEMENTS 171 

velop; the nervous system grows much more 
responsive to mental conditions, the brain 
begins to react strongly upon the body, and 
the higher powers of the brain begin to appear. 
Consequently the desires become more com- 
plex and fitful, and the attention is fixed upon 
other people and upon the underlying reasons 
for things. 

The consciousness of the child, his soul 
itself, has to keep pace with these rapid 
changes. At first it simply observes and ac- 
cepts. Then it tries experiments of imitation 
on its own account. Then in childhood it 
begins to take an independent stand about 
external matters and to draw simple con- 
clusions of its own about relative values; 
new experiences come fast, and it must sort 
them and store them away for use. In the 
midst of this youth arrives. The testing and 
sorting is not half finished, but there rushes 
upon the unexpectant consciousness an inun- 
dation of wholly new experiences, feelings, 
and interests, a whole new world of new 
motives and sensations. 

Now all this amazingly complicated phy- 



172 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

sical and spiritual process takes place in the 
short space of sixteen or eighteen years, from 
the infant whose only powers are to eat and 
digest to the grown youth ready to take up 
and comprehend the innumerable activities, 
responsibilities, and inheritances of civilized 
life. The more man grows civilized, the 
more obvious the stages are ; and every genera- 
tion of every nation from the beginning has 
marked the physical alterations by a change 
in the child's customs and occupations as he 
passes from one stage to the next. But the 
modern American, with his characteristic 
disregard of history, has decided that he will 
pay little attention to this process. Yet when 
once the process becomes clear to us, we should 
need no help in understanding that each 
stage should be dealt with according to its 
nature, and should not have thrust upon it 
circumstances with which it cannot properly 
cope. Sixteen or eighteen years of depend- 
ence and rapid development are none too 
many for the firm establishment of the child's 
individuality. "Prolonged infancy" is the 
peculiar privilege of civilized man, and is his 



AMUSEMENTS 173 

time for gaining health and storing strength 
in every part of his being. It is his time for 
gaining ideals, fixing standards, strengthen- 
ing powers, discovering preferences. It is his 
lime for becoming a real person of depth 
and definiteness, and for working out the 
resources of his own inheritance before he 
begins to produce an inheritance for others. 
Those who have charge over him should see 
to it that he is not cheated of his chance to 
make from his inheritance something sound 
and whole. No parents are wholly content 
with their own bringing up or with their own 
capacity for joy in life and work. They can 
at least make a little advance for their chil- 
dren. Without exceptional insight, a father 
and mother can give to sons and daughters 
great and memorable happiness by securing 
for them a childhood unhampered by too 
many opportunities and too much pleasure. 
Childhood is scarcely more than a seventh 
part of the normal term of life. We all think 
folly of a man who exhausts himself with 
pleasure one day in seven so that the other 
six are useless to him. How much worse so to 



174 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

exhaust a childhood with pseudo-pleasures that 
the other six parts of life are maimed and 
full of heaviness! The happiness of child- 
hood is no more important than the hap- 
piness of youth or of maturity. Our con- 
sciousness, our self, remains the same through 
life. Pleasure is pleasure, pain is pain, 
and at eighty we are even more thankful 
for health and affection than we were at 
eighteen. 

So will it be with our children; and we are 
responsible not only for making their child- 
hood the best of its kind, happy and pros- 
perous in itself, full of really complete satis- 
factions, but also for making it a progressive, 
sound preparation toward the greatest pos- 
sible number of happy, prosperous, and use- 
ful hours when they are grown. They do 
not even know what will make to-day really 
pleasant and satisfactory. As for the long 
period of their maturity, it is as far beyond 
their experience as it is beyond their develop- 
ment. We must protect them from their igno- 
rant misconceptions. It is not fair to let them 
follow their fancy when it chooses occupa- 



AMUSEMENTS 175 

tions and amusements which will injure them 
now or in later life. 



Stated in this bald way, it seems as if no 
respectable parents could permit such injury 
to their children. Yet it is permitted con- 
stantly by parents who are not only respectable 
but solicitous and affectionate. They do not 
know that they are blundering because they 
are not used to studying either consequences 
or general principles; but their mistake is 
patent to the onlooker. Specifically it is 
over-stimulation. They over-stimulate a child 
by not fitting his occupations to his present 
powers: this is especially true of the amuse- 
ments which they permit or provide. What 
they should do, on the contrary, is to regulate 
his occupations and especially his amuse- 
ments by setting fixed limits beyond which as a 
matter of course he must not go. They should 
portion his time among his occupations so 
that all his powers shall be used in due pro- 
portion ; and they should teach him to control 
his desires and to depend on himself. Instead 
they make the mistake of under-regulation. 



176 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

In dealing with the first stage of hfe, this 
mistake has gone pretty much out of use 
among conscientious people. It is no longer 
the custom to make of a baby a show for 
admiring friends at all hours, or to try per- 
petually to entertain him. We know that life 
as it comes is sufficient amusement to him, 
and that constant human intercourse is very 
exciting. This excellent change in the treat- 
ment of babies we owe to the baby hospitals 
and the lessons which they having learned 
have taught. We have here, at least, con- 
sented to listen to the voice of experience. 
It is after babyhood that the mistakes gen- 
erally begin. The errors are not flagrant, per- 
haps, but the little child often has too many 
clothes, too many toys, too much done to en- 
tertain him, too little regularity and mono- 
tony and solitude, — in fact, a congestion of 
opportunity. 

For the older children the school is usually 
dominant; but the school seldom aims at 
having a soothing effect on children. And 
many parents who can afford it, — and there 
is the trouble, they want to do all that they 



AMUSEMENTS 177 

can afford to do for the child, — many 
parents add during the school year frequent 
and long lessons of various kinds and a variety 
of social pleasures and other "opportunities," 
including unwholesome things to eat. 

But early youth is where the great mis- 
chief is done. Seeing the youth's eager 
increase of desire for all sorts of novel ex- 
perience, and his new-born appreciation of 
human interest, parents take it as a sign of 
what is needed, and gratify the cravings to 
the limit of their purses. They feel that they 
must not deprive their children of any good 
that can be supplied. They forget that what 
is new-born is very delicate and must be sup- 
plied most cautiously with what it craves. 

There is no reason why any boy or girl 
should see every good play, all the available 
works of art, every remarkable performer or 
performance of any sort. Samples, suitable 
samples, are sufficient, a few notable experi- 
ences of each kind. Neither do the children 
need for social advantage a steady succes- 
sion of dancing parties, lunch parties, dinner 
parties, house parties, theatre parties, bridge 



178 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

parties, any more than they need to smoke 
or to take wine. Physical advantage does not 
demand that girls should do fancy dancing in 
public, share in riding exhibitions, and take 
part in tournaments, nor that boys should 
run wild all summer in woods and lakes, or 
enter athletic contests before great audiences. 
Intellectual advantage does not require a 
full round of concerts, lectures, charities, 
problem books, and clubs of all kinds. So- 
cially, physically, and intellectually in our 
cities, both boys and girls are over-stimulated, 
they over-do. There is a far-spread lack of 
wise regulation, especially in the matter of 
social life among large numbers of mere 
acquaintances. 

Such social life is essentially adult life. 
For its proper use and understanding it 
needs all the accumulated knowledge of 
individual characters which has gradually 
been absorbed during the self -engrossed years 
of immaturity. To socialize a child — that 
is, to surround him with occupations which 
throw upon him social responsibilities — 
dazes his youth and dulls his maturity. In 



AMUSEMENTS 179 

society, comfort and success demand a know- 
ledge of character, an understanding of moral 
issues, and a clear judgment about the relative 
values of aesthetic, financial, social, and eth- 
ical claims. Such knowledge, understanding, 
and judgment a child cannot gain. Society 
life puts upon him what he cannot carry, 
quite as really as if he were laboring in a coal 
mine. Child-labor stunts the body. Unchild- 
ish pleasure dwarfs the mind, the will, and 
the emotions, by over-stimulation. 

No parent can look too sharply into his own 
policy in these matters. We are each respon- 
sible for discovering our own share in the 
present distressing condition of nerve weak- 
ness throughout the community. It is caused 
by over-stimulation, and it must be cured by 
proper regulation. We must learn to observe 
consequences in our own lives, our friends* 
lives, and the life of the race; to balance one 
value against another, and so to choose the 
greater among admissible pleasures. By cul- 
tivating, in this way, a sense of true propor- 
tion, we shall establish broad lines of total 



180 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

elimination, within which we shall have con- 
stantly in use principles of choice which will 
prevent us from planning for ourselves or the 
children more than we can justly perform, 
and will save us from accepting what we can- 
not freely use. 

The broad lines of elimination seem at 
first sight easy to establish. We have merely 
to avoid what is harmful, — to admit no 
pleasure which is bad for the health, bad for 
the morals, or bad for the inner self. This 
seems easy and eminently obvious. Yet such 
pleasures are exceedingly common, even 
among the children of solicitous parents. 
In practical application, wise elimination is 
not a simple task, for it necessitates shutting 
out not only the pleasures which are always 
harmful, but those which are unfit at each 
especial stage. 

For instance, although no one would choose 
an occupation, much less a pleasure, because 
it was bad for the health, yet it is common 
enough to choose one in spite of its being bad 
for the health. Grown people must often do 
what injures their health, because only so can 



AMUSEMENTS 181 

they gain something more important than 
health. But our children have no such re- 
sponsibilities. Life for them now must hold 
only what is best for the whole self and for 
each part of the whole self. 

Consider going to the theatre, for instance. Going 
to the theatre a few times in a winter is good for older 
children, provided it does not interfere with the next 
day's duties and provided that the play is suited to 
their stage of development. But going to the theatre 
a dozen times in a winter cannot be good for any chil- 
dren, no matter how old, — even if there were by a 
miracle twelve plays given in one winter worth their 
seeing. Parents often do not take the trouble to find 
out beforehand what the play is like, and do not guess 
afterwards what harmful impressions have been left 
on the child's uncritical consciousness. There is most 
frequently the emotional harm of witnessing experi- 
ences which their own real life could not or should not 
bring for years yet. There is too often also the moral 
harm of receiving ideas of bad conduct and motives 
which they never would have invented for themselves 
and cannot estimate correctly. Then, too, there is 
unavoidably the physical disadvantage to them of 
sitting inactive in a crowded room for three hours, 
gazing at a bright light, and having their brains made 
unnaturally active by following an artificial rapidity 
of happenings. And there is, too, the deprivation of 
not being out-of-doors, muscularly active, or in bed. 



182 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

sound asleep, laying up stores of strength all that time. 
The same considerations, of course, cover all late 
hours. Once or twice a winter to be up late is no harm 
even to quite a little child, but to be up late once a 
week is bad for any and all children. A growing body 
is like the body of a convalescent; it needs much sleep 
for recuperation. A maturity which shall be fit to meet 
all responsibilities and pleasures serenely and hardily 
can be built only on a sound nervous system, and a 
sound nervous system can be got only by spending 
a wholesome youth. 

Again, it is obvious that no solicitous parent 
would deliberately press upon children what 
is bad for their morals. But the incipient 
moral sense needs to be formed firmly along 
very simple lines of insistence before the 
judgment is in a condition to confront dijE- 
cult situations. Right principles and practice 
must be given full chance to become dear and 
necessary through familiarity and unbroken 
ascendency. 

The plays the children go to, the books they read, 
the conversations they hear, should all strengthen the 
impressions which are to govern them in the days of 
independence. We must not forget that much which 
grown people must face is confusing in its moral pur- 
port. Problem books and problem plays are not fit for 
minds that have as yet no trustworthy clues by which to 



AMUSEMENTS 183 

solve the problems. Evil notions, sordid motives, low 
lives, should not be talked of lightly before them. 

This is the reason for shielding the chil- 
dren, — not in the wish that they might never 
know evil, but with the intention that when 
they do know, as know they should, they shall 
be clear and firm in judgment and choice. A 
hindrance with most grown people is that their 
moral sense is not clear and firm. They can- 
not be firm because they are not clear about 
relative moral values. If we deal fairly with 
the children in this matter of elimination, 
the next generation will know better than 
ours how to avoid graft and divorce and 
embezzlement, public mistakes and personal 
disillusion. 

An injury to the body has palpable con- 
sequences, and an injury to morals is a men- 
ace to the community. Therefore these two 
are recognized evils; but what is bad for 
the inner self has invisible consequences, and 
is therefore seldom vigorously decried. To 
talk of it has a somewhat sentimental sound. 
Theoretically, in a religious sense, most of us 
believe in our souls, but practically we are 



184 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

liable to avoid making definite provision for 
their comfort and health. What is bad for 
the inner self is seldom recognized as harmful 
by a child till long afterwards, and is usually 
unacknowledged or unknown by the parent; 
commonly the good of the inner self is left 
almost to accident. Yet this inner self is 
to be the child's one unfailing companion 
through life, and his whole personal happi- 
ness depends upon its condition. We should 
be solicitous against what injures it. All that 
restricts it, injures it. The inner self must 
have space and leisure. In youth, our com- 
panions should be chiefly individuals not 
companies, friends not acquaintances. Keen 
adult knowledge of human nature and enjoy- 
ment of passing human intercourse can be had 
only after long companionships during child- 
hood and close intimacies during youth. 
Space and leisure for these must not be 
pushed out to make room for "desirable" 
acquaintances, much less to provide for showy 
accomplishments or brilliant amusements. A 
parent who encourages such accomplishments 
and such amusements is yielding to the nat- 



AMUSEMENTS 185 

ural love of excitement. People, old or young, 
enjoy excitement because it makes them feel 
very much alive and relieves them from all 
sense of responsibility. But frequent excite- 
ment is bad, because it taxes vitality too much 
all at one time. Every one who has learned 
the dependable joy of wholesome pleasures 
and the satisfaction of responsibilities skill- 
fully met, gets a great distaste for frequent 
and factitious excitement. Any parent who 
has the courage to deny his children the in- 
jurious excitements need not fear that he is 
depriving them of rightful enjoyment, pro- 
vided that he substitutes the saner pleasures. 

Just at present, girls are especial sufferers from 
unsuitable amusements. Much harm comes from the 
notion that they may do with impunity whatever the 
boys may do without injury. But they cannot. They 
are not like boys. They are much more excitable; they 
are more personally sensitive in body and spirit; and 
more socially affectable, because their nervous centres 
are more completely inter-active. Public athletic com- 
petitions, for instance, well-conducted, may sometimes 
be good for boys over fourteen, but they are alto- 
gether bad for girls. The eagerness for winning and 
the excitement of publicity are both demoralizing to 
them. Again, private athletic sports, while they are 



186 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

good for girls who conduct themselves like girls, are 
not good for girls who conduct themselves like boys, 
— not good either for their health or for their inner 
selves. Lunch parties and dinner parties are doubt- 
less very good fun to girls in their early teens. Scarcely 
older than children, they have not yet outgrown the 
zest of playing at being grown up. But apart from the 
gastronomical joys, the real pleasure of such parties 
consists in conversation, and conversation has signifi- 
cance and value only for the experienced mind, which 
can discern underlying, unexpressed thoughts and 
motives. Such experience can be got not from the 
touch-and-go intercourse of never-so-many gregarious 
occasions, but from the long leisures of individual and 
intimate companionships. Children who spend much 
time in company have little time for intimacy. Danc- 
ing parties, to be sure, have the advantage of vigor- 
ous exercise and lively comradeship; but in their ordi- 
nary form they have the disadvantage of late hours 
and artificial ambitions. House parties may be whole- 
some, but usually they are the opportunity for careless 
manners and irresponsible familiarities with mere 
acquaintances. 

After making, in such ways, wholesale 
elimination of all amusements and occupa- 
tions that are sure to be harmful, the next 
necessity is to get rid of all that are wasteful, 
by establishing a balance among those mul- 
titudinous pleasures any of which are good 



AMUSEMENTS 187 

and desirable. Each possible pleasure has 
always to be considered in several aspects. 
It has to be judged not only for the harm 
it might do, but chiefly for its good conse- 
quences, so that we may decide whether it 
or another would just now bring the greater 
measure of advantage present and to come. 
Thus a gradual exclusion narrows down the 
list of pleasures, first in general principles, 
then further to fit a special character, then 
still further to suit particular circumstances. 
Even at last, the number of available plea- 
sures remains larger than any one person can 
possibly "get round to," more than the hours 
in the day can hold. The final deciding factor 
of practical choice will be at last the passing 
personal preference and convenience of the 
child, and your own convenience at the mo- 
ment. Thus at last by regulation a due bal- 
ance is established. First, by general princi- 
ples of elimination there is set the necessary 
fixed limit beyond which a child must not go ; 
then further by considering his special char- 
acter and circumstances, his time is portioned 
among his occupations so that all his powers 



188 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

shall be used in due proportion; and finally 
by making him choose among his personal 
preferences and consider your convenience, 
he is taught to control his desires and de- 
pend upon himself. Among the countless 
tempting things which might wisely be chosen 
a child must take, on this basis, only enough 
comfortably to fill the waking time. Such 
careful choice does not make any less delight- 
ful the pleasures which are chosen. It in- 
creases and prolongs enjoyment. 

In trying to preserve due balance one has 
to be constantly on one's guard against the 
impression that it is well to have a great deal 
of whatever is good, — the more the better, — 
so that a good experience cannot be repeated 
too often. This is a complete misapprehen- 
sion. The truth is, on the contrary, that 
reiterated experience has almost always a 
constantly decreasing value; and, as it be- 
comes too often repeated, its disadvantages 
begin to operate. A medicine which is cura- 
tive when taken for a week, may grow sick- 
ening when continued for a month. A sample 



AMUSEMENTS 189 

is often sufficient, and, as regards many a 
good thing, once is enough. Once is always 
enough to make the difference between have 
and have not. Once having seen snow, we 
can never return to a snowless consciousness; 
once having cared for a dog, we need not own 
all sorts of dogs, or also cats, rabbits, horses, 
and canaries, in order to experience affection 
for the lower animals; once having really 
learned to milk a cow, hem a handkerchief, or 
bake a cake, we need not keep on milking, or 
hemming, or baking, in order not to lose the 
experience. We must keep on if we wish to 
acquire special skill; but once having done 
any particular thing, we find that the value 
as an experience of each fresh repetition is 
almost in inverse proportion, as it were, to 
the number of times that it has been repeated. 
In fact, experiences are liable to be self- 
completing, so that repetition quickly be- 
comes reiteration. This is equally true of 
experiences so closely akin that they would 
come under the same general class — like 
hemming and overcasting, which are both 
simply experiences of sewing. 



190 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

On the other hand, conditions, that is, states 
of mind, body, or emotion, can be continuing 
and progressive. If a condition be desirable, 
the value of it is generally in direct proportion, 
as it were, to the length of time it has endured. 
There is the desirable mental condition of 
clearness, for instance. The longer it endures, 
the more clear and therefore the more val- 
uable the mind becomes. It is produced not 
by any particular experience, but by exercis- 
ing the mind clearly upon each experience 
which offers itself. Some experiences, such 
as arithmetic examples, give more opportu- 
nity for this practice than others, such as 
shoveling coal. If, however, multifarious 
experiences of any sort offer themselves at 
once or in rapid succession, the mind is un- 
able to attend to them all, and cannot retain 
clearness. It becomes confused by over- 
stimulation. And as it is with clearness, so it 
is with all other desirable mental conditions. 
They cannot be continuing and strong if the 
attention is over-stimulated. Over-stimulation 
results in a sort of mental congestion. 

Another result of the notion that there can- 



AMUSEMENTS 191 

not be too much of a good thing is mental 
stagnation. Congestion comes from having 
too many kinds of things to do; stagnation 
from having too much of one kind to do. 
While congestion is usually a city product, 
stagnation is naturally met oftenest in the 
country. It seems to be almost as injurious 
as congestion to the nerves, though it certainly 
does not over-stimulate the brain. Where it 
exists, the same amusement is provided or 
permitted for a child over and over again, 
without a step of progress, with all the stupid 
reiteration of marking time. 

Sometimes a girl who is fond of embroidery em- 
broiders summer and winter, never learns to sew or 
to knit, or to crochet, even uses always the same stitch 
and does the same sort of patterns. Or a small boy 
who has a literary taste is permitted to take his pencil 
up again as soon as he comes from school or to read a 
book all the afternoon. Little girls are often allowed 
to play dolls for months together. They do not even 
leam to make, wash, and iron the doll's clothes. They 
do not keep house nicely for them. They simply 
"play dolls," talk, walk, sit, and go visiting over and 
over again. This is bad not merely because of the 
fruitless reiteration in the mind; it provides no in- 
vigorating exercise for the body and gives a paltry 



192 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

notion of grown-up life. Stagnation is not so common 
with boys. They have a natural bent toward variety, 
which outdoor life fosters. But many a boy who likes 
sailing goes sailing every day all summer; never walks, 
never rides, fishes, or plays games. A less daring nature 
stupidly repeats some tamer pleasure, as did two boys 
who walked the same four miles and back to the same 
restaurant and ordered the same refreshments, eighty- 
one days out of ninety-two of their vacation. 

Such things are merely filling time instead 
of filling life. This is ridiculous. The whole 
of life ought to be filled with something in- 
teresting and progressive. 

For instance, it is good for children to learn to dance 
and good for young people to have dances for social 
purposes. But some mothers send their children to 
dancing-school every winter for twelve years or more. 
This is done for social purposes ; but a dancing-school 
is seldom well fitted to social uses of children. It is 
suited to the needs and tastes of advanced youth when 
an interest in persons has set in, conversation begins to 
be a pleasure, and the oppositeness of sex is an agree- 
able factor. Children who go much to dancing-school 
are liable to be learning nothing but shallow ambitions; 
for the ordinary dancing-school lays emphasis on the 
aesthetic instead of the moral values, teaching that 
success in life for the girls is to depend upon good 
looks, good clothes, and glib tongues, coupled with the 
appreciation of these things by the boys. The vain 



AMUSEMENTS 193 

are flattered and the self-distrustful go to the wall. To 
both boys and girls it is often a school for selfish- 
ness, both exciting and stagnating. These evils could 
be avoided if it were customary to build houses with 
large playrooms at the top, where wholesome, friendly 
home-dances and game-parties could be had for the 
children, — governed entirely by the spirit of mutual 
kindness and good-will. Here the boys and girls could 
learn in a natural school the true deportment of good 
breeding, which is based upon the dictates of unselfish- 
ness even toward mere acquaintances and strangers. 
Then when they came to large afiPairs and public 
gatherings they would enjoy the real and smile at the 
extraneous, carrying themselves with ease and not 
affectation. Indeed, with care, even dancing-schools 
can be made to yield the same advantage. 

Vacation is an especial opportunity for a stagnant 
mental condition. Vacations used scarcely to exist. 
Sixty years ago good schools had only three weeks' 
vacation. But teachers have recently taken education 
up so ardently and are compressing so much into one 
school day that they have to provide a long relaxation, 
and families have besides adopted the custom of sum- 
mer migration. Hence, the long vacation; which we 
actually take at its apparent meaning to be vacant 
time, and we let it be empty of profit. Yet there is 
plenty to do : outdoor science, with or without a teacher; 
languages, with or without a teacher; systematic read- 
ing; the keeping of records; creative work, mental or 
manual according to the child's taste; perfecting skill in 
sports ; making new excursions or improving old ones ; 



194 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

— hosts of things. But dawdhng and reiteration and 
sitting about talking all day should be tabooed and 
impossible. The "gang" life of many girls and boys 
at summer hotels and summer resorts is stagnant, 
even if by good fortune it be not malarious. And so 
sometimes is even the camp life which is so common a 
resource now for parents with boys and girls whom they 
cannot occupy. Many camps have in them no com- 
pensation for depriving a boy or girl all summer of 
most of the influences which go to develop the civil- 
ized creature in them. In such camps, if they stay very 
long, all their finer faculties stagnate, primitive oppor- 
tunity reiterates, simple experience recurs. A well- 
managed camp guards against this by careful regula- 
tion, and is a most wholesome substitute for hotels 
and watering-places. Sunday, too, has become a 
vacant day or one which is meaningless in many homes 
which have done away with the old-time frequent 
church-going and prescribed sacred reading. Some- 
times the children spend Sunday in social dawdling, 
sometimes in week-day games and studies. This is 
a great loss of opportunity. The sacred character of 
Sunday can be and should be retained even in families 
which no longer recognize the sacred character of 
church. Sunday is a day for setting free the higher 
nature. Close human bonds of family affection or close 
friendship should be given a chance to strengthen. 
Serious, stirring thoughts should be brought upper- 
most. The depth and dignity of life should become 
apparent through special recognition. Sunday is a 
day of opportunity. It should not yield stagnation. 



AMUSEMENTS 195 

for that is more unlovely, even if it be not more baneful 
than congestion. 

A stagnating day, a day without mental 
motion, should seem to a child or youth as 
unsatisfactory as a day without dinner. It 
should seem queer, unnatural, leaving him 
vaguely hungry. Outside the prescribed work 
of school, his occupations and amusements 
ought to be along the lines of self-chosen 
interests, thrown in his way it may be by 
others, but taken up of his own motion. His 
leisure time should not be empty. In short, 
the cure for stagnation lies in the conviction 
that progress is essential. Stagnation would 
not be possible if parents steadily remem- 
bered that the persistent human need is a 
constantly fresh exercise of power. 

Congestion and stagnation are both gross 
errors, easy to avoid when once they are 
recognized. But in the actual final choice it 
is difficult to be sure that one's decision will 
really secure a satisfactory balance. The task 
is so to choose that each power in the child 
shall be gratified in proportion to its durable 



196 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

human value. This requires a sense of human 
values and a fine perception of what effect 
each gratification has upon the several powers. 
For each experience affects all the child's 
powers at once and alters the condition of 
each in varying degree. To judge of the 
probable value of any occupation or amuse- 
ment to any special child, we must have a 
lively conception of what the child is in his 
best estate and what sort of creature he is to 
grow to be. No special advice that is practi- 
cally useful can be given by an outsider. Our 
success must depend upon our own sense of 
proportion, upon the fineness of our feeling 
for balance and adjustment. 

It is possible by over-stimulus and want of 
regulation to rob a child of the best of all that 
immaturity has to give him, and so to send 
him into the world which must receive him, 
an obstructed creature, confused in thought 
and feeling, and with a nervous system so 
broken that little reliance can be placed on 
his assistance or his judgment. It is possible 
by elimination and balance to secure for him 
the best of all that childhood and youth can 



AMUSEMENTS 197 

hold, and thus to bring him to the world 
which needs him, a developed creature, elas- 
tic and eager in thought and feeling, and 
with a nervous system so sound and whole 
that he is steadily able to fill the place that 
fits him and to reap the full yield of what life 
can offer him. 

This does not demand perpetual attention 
or profound thought. The point to establish 
is the kind of thing to be permitted for each 
stage. Then provide the simplest of necessary 
material, and the children's own unresting 
activity and zest will accomplish the desired 
end. Build them from within out. Give 
them a full chance to learn the spirit and 
heart of things before crowding upon them 
the accepted methods of expression. Do not 
let them get accretions of manners, opinions, 
tastes, or knowledge gained from imitation 
and passive observation through a mere desire 
to conform or to please. These make a wall 
of habit around a child's real understanding 
and impulses. Men who have been built up 
from within out, have an enduring centre of 
health and steadiness. Their childhood was 



198 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

not over-stimulated or allowed to stagnate; 
they have a superior charm, and are to them- 
selves and others a constant invigoration. 

Always it must be remembered that, whereas 
adults are gregarious, complex, possessed of 
many faculties and much experience, children 
are self-centred, simple, with undeveloped 
powers and scanty experience. Childhood is 
very self-sufl&cing. The smaller the child is, 
the more this is true, though childhood in this 
sense does not come wholly to a legitimate 
end before the age of eighteen or even twenty. 
Its four stages are each a little more advanced 
toward maturity than the one before, but each 
is marked by the same necessity for being 
allowed a habitable world of its own, unper- 
plexed by the occupations, responsibilities, 
and pleasures of maturity. Let each stage 
begin with a little of the new which is to come 
during its progress, but let it not accumulate 
all until the end. Let each have toward its 
end a slight foretaste of what is to come in 
the stage beyond, but only enough to prevent 
shock when the change comes. Make amuse- 
ments as well as all other occupations corre- 



AMUSEMENTS 199 

spond to age and development. To do this 
well, parents need to keep a clear vision of 
what is a normal, healthy, progressive child- 
hood, and of what is the full maturity toward 
which the children should be moving; and, 
above all, they need to remember that each 
child is a separate problem, altering at every 
stage. 

By holding these considerations steadily in 
mind, and putting them bravely into prac- 
tice, we shall take our fair share in the work 
of abolishing the present distressing condition 
of nerve weakness, and building up in our 
nation steady health, rational life, and full 
development. 



HEALTH 

So much has been said and so well said, dur- 
ing the past twenty years, about the physical 
care of children, that nothing detailed upon 
the subject is needed here. But a book on 
the training of children cannot rightly omit 
to emphasize the necessity for securing to 
each child the best health of which he is 
capable. 

A man in poor health can be efficient, cul- 
tivated, and full of knowledge. He can be 
good and useful, and self-dependent; and if 
his powers permit, he can be even great. But 
his inner self suffers. He cannot reach his 
own fullest self -use; he cannot know the joy 
of balanced powers; and he can never come 
into possession of the soundest judgment of 
which he is capable. 

Ill-health saps the nerves and wastes the 
attention. It makes a perfectly free, un- 



HEALTH 201 

troubled mind impossible. Hence it makes 
thoroughly sound judgment impossible. Ill- 
health wastes time, and no matter how much 
happiness a sick man may compass, he would 
have more happiness if he had more un- 
troubled hours. 

In planning to give our children good 
health so far as in us lies, we need the same 
point of view that we need in planning for 
their mental benefit, — the home point of 
view. It is home, not the doctor, that secures 
them good health. The doctor merely saves 
them from sickness. 

And the home procedure toward health is 
also very simple. It requires no technical or 
professional knowledge whatever. 



Four things it requires for the child, in or- 
der to maintain health : — 

1. Plenty of quiet sleep at regular hours. 

2. Plenty of simple food at regular hours. 

3. Plenty of fresh air at all hours. 

4. A daily movement of the bowels. 



202 HOME, SCHOOL, AND VACATION 

Four things it exacts from the mother, in 
order to avoid sickness : — 

1. Close watching of 

the color of the skin, 

especially, under the eyes, 

on the lips, 

round the mouth, 

the ears; 
the brightness of the eyes; 
the general bearing; 
the tongue and the temperature. 

2. Sending for the doctor immediately, 

as soon as the mother wonders what to do. 

3. Implicitly obeying the doctor's directions. 

4. Not fussing. 

This is actually all that is required in the 
attempt to lay up in a child all those stores of 
reserve strength which constitute firm health. 
All other physical attention is either care of 
the child in sickness, or else assistance toward 
further development. 



A TABLE OF BEGINNINGS 



Every one who has charge of children feels the need 
from time to time of some reminder about the sequence 
of childish growth and interest. The following table 
should serve as a series of such reminders. The -figures 
on the dotted lines indicate the advancing years of child- 
hood. The words at the head of the columns indicate six 
different fields of 'progress. If the table be read between 
two dotted lines, across two opposite pages, a general 
list of suitable occupations and preoccupations for some 
one age is suggested. If it be read down one column, 
through three pages, a progressive list in some especial 
field is developed. 

The suggestions and developments are not intended 
as directions and must be considered always tentatively. 
Many things, for instance, are apparently too difficult 
for the age at which they appear. Rowing, of course, 
cannot serve any practical use at the age of six. But it is 
an experience of great advantage to a vigorous child if 
he rows for only ten or fifteen minutes without strain. 
Thus, at six he gets the idea and feeling of it simply as 
an experience; the next year he practices it more seri- 
ously, and by the time he is eight he can row a light 
load very well. But he must not be kept at it until it 
becomes drudgery. This distinction between experience, 
practice, and drudgery must be constantly in the parent's 
mind. Once mastering an idea or motion is an expe- 
rience for a child, valuable in itself. Exercising that 
mastery gives practice, and, combined with natural 



A TABLE OF BEGINNINGS 205 

aptitiide, brings skill. Going on ivith the exercise to 
the point of loeariness and fast all possible interest is 
drudgery ; and that is permissible only for the gaining 
of some compensating ulterior good. 

Again, an interest may be here set down for an age 
much older than some especial child seized upon it. This 
must not be taken as an indication that such a child 
is harmfully precocious. It may simply indicate the 
familiar truth that the order as well 'as the rate of de- 
velopment differs widely between individuals. 

In short, regarded as a fixed schedule the table appears 
ridiculous; but if considered as a series of suggestions 
it may sometimes prove useful. Each matter is men- 
tioned at an age when an average child may well en- 
counter it for the first time; whether he does so or not 
depends largely upon circumstances. After it has once 
been encountered, it should seldom be completely dropped. 
Either at home or at school, it will continue to play its 
part, small or great. 



TABLE OF 



INFANCY 

{From birth to about three years old) 

BEHAVIOB, KTC. BEADING AND WBITING, BTC. SCIENCE, ETC. 
Submission Qualities of matter 

Obedience Idea of direction 



Self-control 


1 


Idea of distance 
1 


Imitation 

Beasonablenesa 

Self-amusement 


Talking; 
....3 


Idea of quantity 

Idea of causes 

Idea of number 
2 


Self-direction 

Courage 

Politeness 

Kindness 

Geutlenasa 


" Mother Goose," etc. 
Picture books 


Idea of reasons 

Idea of relation 
Distinction between 
past, present, & future 



3 

Cheerfulness 

Sincerity 

Unselfishness 
4 



EARLY CHILDHOOD 

{From about three to about six years old) 
...3 3.... 



Listening to verses and very 
short stories 

Using alphabet blocks 
Reciting verses 

Knowing the days of the week 
.4 



Distinction between 
fact and fancy 

Counting ten 

Distinction between 

right and left 
Idea of growth 
.4 



listening to myths, fairy 
tales, etc., read aloud 
Reading 
Truthfuliiess Acting Mother Goose, etc. 

Knowing names of the months 
Printing with pencil 
6 5 



Counting things 

Names of common birds 

and flowers 
Adding and subtracting 

orally 
Making the Arabic nu- 
merals 
Idea of death 

..5 

Idea of birth 
Understanding simple 

maps and plans 
Combining numbers up 

to 10 
Learning names of com- 
mon trees and insects, 
stones and sea-things 
Sense of proportion 
..6 



Trustworthiness 

Independence 
6 



Memorizing 



Writing 
.6 



206 



BEGINNINGS 



ABT, ETC. 
Perception of light 

Distinction between 

Bounds 
Using gentle voice 
1 



INFANCY 



(Frovi birth to about three years old) 

EXKKCISE, GAMES, ETC. 
Using the muscles 
Establishing hygienic habits 

Creeping 
Throwing ball 
...1 



BED HOUB, ETC. 

From 22 hours 
to 16 hours 
of sleep 
a day 



Lullabys 



Walking 

Using blocks, rings, toys 
with wheels, etc. 

Using spoon and mug 



Sleep from 
6 p. m. to 6 a. m. 

Rest from 

four to two hours 
.2 



Using pencil 
Stringing beads 

without plan 
Distinguishing 

tastes and colors 
Sewing cards 
Undressing 



3. 



" Finger plays" 
" Mother plays " 
Animal toys 

EARLY CHILDHOOD 

(From about three to about six years old) 



Sleep from 
6 p. m. to 6 a. m. 



Rest from 

four to two hours 



Reproducing singing 
tones 

Partly dressing 

Cutting 

Picking up toys 

Looking at good pic- 
tures 

Distinguishing smells 



" Button, button," " Barberry- 
bush," etc. 
Sandpile play 
Helping older people 
Running 



Taking walks 



Sleep from 
6 p. m. to 7 a. m. 



Rest from 
three to one hours 



Singing scale Helping with dishes 

Coloring pictures " London Bridge," etc. 

Sewing cloth & buttons Mud pies 

More difiBcult kinder- Swinging 
garten work 

Singing songs 

5 6 



Sleep from 
6 p. m. to 7 a.m. 

Rest from 

three to one hours 



Dressing entirely 
Clay work 
Weaving 
Pasting 
Listening to good 



Family singing 
6 



Dusting, Brushing up 

" Ooiug to Jerusalem," etc. 



.6. 



207 



Sleep from 
6 p. m. to 7 a. m. 



Driving hoop. Climbing trees, Rest as needed 

ladders, etc. 
Marching 



BBHAVIOK, ETC. 



Reserve about 
private and 
personal matters 

Sense of 
responsibility 



Bespect 



Xoyalty 
to persons 

Kefinement 

9 

Sense of personal 
honor 

Precision 
in execution 



10.. 



Reverence 



Perseverance 
with long plans 



lioyalty 
to principle 



!».. 



TABLE OF 

LATER CHILDHOOD 

{From about six to about twelve years old) 

EEADING ANB WRITING, ETC. SCIENCE, ETC. 
6 6 

Silent reading of poetiy, ^ to 100 °^ """""^"^ 

Writing Mtera maps and the globe 

Spelling Telling time 

Typewritmg Simple botany 

7 7 

French language Outline maps 

Reading both silent and loud, ^eaf collection 

and hstenmg to reading j, j arithmetic 

of any suitable books, 

especially books bearing gj j^ hygiene 

upon school studies Understanding birth 

8 8 

Making raised maps 
Slower collection 

Simple physiology 
9 9 

American Collection of 

history 

shells and stones 

Simple zoSlogy 
10 10 

Helping with a home-written Butterfly collection 
magazine. 

Stamp collection 

Inventional 
Ancient history geometry 
11 11 

Keeping a journal Simple facts of 

physics and 
Reading historical romances, 
etc. chemistry 

Greek history 

18 la 

208 



BEGINNINGS 



LATER CHILDHOOD 

(From about six to about twelve years old) 

EXERCISE, GAMES, ETC. BED HOUB, ETC. 
...6 6 



Singing by note orally ^.T? l°T " ^Jjr^lr.?'^^'^^ 



Playing piano 
Using hammer, nails 
Elnitting 
Tracing, eto.^ 



Dancing, " French Tag,' 

" Hunt the slipper," etc. 
Roller skating. Jump rope 
Swimming 
Rowing 



Sleep from 
6.30 p. m. to 7 a. m. 



Sight singing 

Hemming 

Crocheting 

Modeling 

8 



Calisthenics, " Blind man's 

Buff," etc. 
Battledore, Tops 
Bicycling, Ice skating 
Digging 
PicUng berries 

8 



Sleep from 
7 p. m. to 7 a. m. 



Lessons on a special 
instrimieut 

Simple cooking 

Drawing 
Whittling 

9 



Afternoon concerts 

Darning 

Care of doll's clothes 

Color work 

Carpentry 

10 

Basketry 
Printing press 
Cane seating 

11 



Sweeping 

Card games, "Dumb 

Crambo," etc. 
Marbles 
Driving 
Weeding 
Harnessing 

9 



Sleep from 
7 p. m. to 7 a. m. 



Washing dishes 

Ironing 

Animal game, " Coddam," etc. 

Sailing, Fishing 

" Scrub," etc. 

Care of small animals 



10. 



Sleep from 
7.30 p. m. to 7 a. m. 



Housework 

" Authors," " Stage coach," 

etc. 
Riding, Archery- 
Milking, Currying, etc. 
Kicking football 

11 



.10. 



Sleep from 
7.30 p. m. to 7 a. m. 



.11. 



Part singing 
Turning lathe 
Embroidery 



Washing clothes 
" Logoraachi," " Spelling- 
ton," etc. 
Hockey, Baseball 
Cutting grass. Pruning 



Sleep from 
8 p. m. to 7 a. m. 



la 13 13 

1 Beginning at this age, some constructive work should be done every day. 
209 



TABLE OF 



EAKLY YOUTH 

(From about twelve to about eighteen years old) 



BEHAVIOB, ETC. 
13 

Chivalry 

WomanlineBB 

IS 



Sense of official 
honor 



14 

Democratic spirit 



15. 



Sense of relative 
values in 
moral and social 
distinctions 



16. 



Jjoyalty to ideals 



17., 



Sense of respon- 
sibility toward 
humanity 



Idea of 
self-culture 



READING AND WRITING, ETC, 
.13 

Acting small plays at home 

Beading foreign language alone 

Writing whatever original 

composition is natural 
Grammar 
.13 

Novels of the simpler 

realistic sort 
Simpler poets 

Latin 

Roman history 
.14 

Simpler great masterpieces 



SCIENCE, ETC. 



Famous passages in English 
and in foreign languages 
General history 
.15 

German language 
Simpler essayists 



Afternoon theatre — 
comedies and romantic plays 

.16 



Biographies 
Lectures 



Evening theatre 
Bhetoric 
.17 



Serious English novels 
of the first three quarters 
of the 19th century 

Serious poets and essayists 

Civil Government 



.18. 



Tragedies 

Problem novels of real 

moral and literary worth. 
English Literature 

210 



.13 

Keeping accounts 

Understanding sex 

Simple algebra 
.13 



Keeping records 
of weather, etc. 



Simple physical 

geography 
.14 



Serious hygiene and 
physiology 

Idea of various and 
sequent causes for one 
result, and vice versa 

Geometry 
.15..... 

Names and natures of 
chief stars 
and constellations 

Simple geology 

.16 

Solid geometry 



.17., 



Following special or 
general scientific 
interests 

Trigonometry 

.18 



Biology 
Domestic Science 



BEGINNINGS 

EARLY YOUTH 

{From about twelve to about eighteen years old) 



ART, ETC. 



18 

Sketching^ 

Scroll saw 
13 



Carving 



14. 



Following some 
special talent 



15. 



Design 

16 

Erening concerts 



Culture of singing 
voice 



17 



EXEBCISB, GAMES, ETC. 

.12 

Sewing on machine 

Cooking meals 

"Geography game," "Andros- 
coggin," etc. 

Tennis 

Hoeing 

Care of large animals 
.13 

General care of bouse 

Fancy dancing 

" History game," etc. 
Golf 



BED HOUR, ETC. 



.14 

Evening game parties 

" Crambo," " Capping 
verses," etc. 

Competitive running, jump- 
ing, etc. 

Mowing 

.15 

Basketball 
Football 



Plowing 
.16 

Ordering meals 
Evening dancing parties 
Long tramps 
.17 



Private theatricals, Lunch parties 
concerts, etc. Camping out alone 



18. 



.18. 



Philanthropic 
interests 



Housekeeping 
Dinner parties 
House parties 



.13. 



Sleep from 
8 p. m. to 7 a. m. 



.13. 



Sleep from 
8.30 p. m. to 7 p. m. 



Sleep from 
9 p. m. to 7 a. m. 



.15. 



Sleep from 
9 p. m. to 7 a. m. 



.16 

Sleep from 
9.30 p. m. to 7 a. HL 

Semi-occasional late 
hours 



.17 

Sleep from 
10 p. m. to 7 a. m. 



Occasional late hours 



.18 

Sleep from 

10 p. m. to 7 a. m. 

More frequent late 
hours 



211 



INDEX 



Adolescence (see Infancy), ped- 
agogic theory of, 76. 

Aims (see Motives), of education, 
13 ; of schooling, 14 ; of good 
school, 18 ; of parents, 21; suit- 
able to babyhood, 25; suitable 
to primary school, 28 ; suitable 
to vanward group, 37 ; of tute- 
lage, 39 ; of education, 42 ; for 
character, 44; of home teach- 
ing, 103 ; of good reading, 115 ; 
of discipline, 116. 

Annoyance, maxim of, 133. 

Argument, maxim of, 45. 

Arithmetic, home teaching of, 95. 

Art, home teaching of, 98. 

Babyhood (see Infancy), duties of, 
25 ; teachers of, 25; characteris- 
tics of, 26 ; schooling for, 26 ; 
can forestall school, 48 ; special 
interests and mental powers of, 
92 ; method of home teaching in 
(see Teaching), 93 ; as a stage of 
development, 170; false plea- 
sures in, 176. 
Balance (see Proportion), is ne- 
cessary to completeness, 61 ; we 
do not understand, 163 ; value 
in pleasures, 179 ; among plea- 
sures, 186 ; by regulation, 187 ; 
satisfactory, 195. 
Beginnings, should be unconscious, 
Cf 89; table of, 206. 



Beliefs, accumulated unconscious- 
ly, 105 ; education selects, 106. 

Brain, must be exercised, 42; over- 
taxed, 160 ; change in ability of, 
169 ; in infancy, childhood, and 
youth, 170. 

Bribes, maxim of, 146. 

Changeableness, obstacle to disci- 
pline, 123. 

Character, is alive, 60 ; natural, 
118. 

Childhood, characteristics of, 29- 
34 ; needs of, 27 ; schooling for, 
27-32 ; subjects to be studied by, 
31 ; interests suitable to, 32 ; 
hours of schooling for, 52 ; phy- 
sical stages of, 170 ; should be 
happy and progressive, 174 ; 
self-sufficing, 198. 

Children, have no experience, 117 ; 
are like ourselves, 125 ; are pro- 
phecies, 130 ; can be ethically 
civilized, 131 ; are not like our- 
selves, 169; must be protected 
from pleasure, 174; over-worked, 
176 ; socialized, 178 ; need lei- 
sure, 186. 

Choice, maxim of, 145 ; modem 
need of, 162 ; no principles of, 
163 ; on false principles, 168 ; of 
harmful pleasures, 180; care- 
ful, 188 ; principles of, in plea- 
sures, 197. 



214 



INDEX 



Classes, should be small, 9 ; give 
stimulus of numbers and ne- 
cessity, 17 ; educated, are not 
faithful, 37. 
Coeducation, pedagogic theory of, 

80. 
Comparison, children need make 
none, 25 ; belongs to later life, 
33 ; not natural to children, 92 ; 
maxim of, 153. 
Competition, uudesirable in child- 
hood, 32 ; may be used in youth, 
35 ; maxim of, 153 ; bad f orgirls, 
185. 
Completeness (see Perfection), im- 
possible, 47 ; entails balance, 
61 ; undesirable for small chil- 
dren, 102. 
Consciousness, social, 116 ; slowly 
gained, 128 ; self-, maxim of, 
151 ; means of gaining, 152. 
Conservatism, obstacle to disci- 
pline, 121 ; is mental inertia, 
121 ; its cure, 122 ; desirable in 
managing children, 167. 
Convictions, concerning education, 

46-48. 
Criticism, unsuitable in children, 
33 ; maxims of, 154 ; impossible 
for children, 182. 
Culture, contrasted with know- 
ledge and efficiency, 11-14 ; 
best acquired at home, 14; 
studies, pedagogic theory of, 75. 

Desire, wholesome, a final pur- 
pose, 42 ; importance of, 44 ; 
not a mental power, 57 ; must 
be reached by discipline, 116 ; 
remote from judgment, 117; 



seeks the best, 117 ; follows 
affection, admiration, and confi- 
dence, 120. 

Development, training to suit, 21 ; 
different views of, 22 ; incom- 
plete, 37 ; different in each 
child, 41 ; natural, pedagogic 
theory of, 68 ; full, not now at- 
tained, 160 ; four stages of, 
169-174 ; of moral sense, 182 ; 
of inner sense, 184; of social 
sense, 186 ; of natural self, 
197. 

Dignity, maxim of, 157. 

Disappointment, maxim of, 15. 

Discipline, regxUates social con- 
duct, 117; ignorance about, 118; 
obstacles to, 118-125 ; based on 
affection, admiration, and con- 
fidence, 120; necessary, 124; 
helps adjustment to life, 128 ; 
helps development, 131 ; gives 
a good start, 132 ; triple prob- 
lem of, 132 ; maxims of, 133. 

Drudgery, decreased, 162 ; expe- 
rience, practice, and, 204. 

Education, different for each indi- 
vidual, 41 ; logical system of, 
impossible, 46 ; advanced by the 
use of words, 46 ; need not be a 
scramble, 53 ; matter of, not im- 
portant, 54 ; method of, not im- 
portant, 55 ; must be based on 
inductive reasoning, 67 ; selects 
beUefs, 106. 

Efficiency (see Self-dependence, 
Independence), fostered by 
training, 10; result of logical 
thought and just understand- 



INDEX 



215 



ing, 12 ; more important than 
knowledge or culture, 12, 14 ; 
demands thorougli knowledge, 
12; strengthened by good school- 
ing, 14 ; causes self-dependence, 
19. 

Enjoying school, necessity for, 17; 
good way of, 32 ; pedagogic 
theory of, 71. 

Essentials, of schooling, 8 ; of 
training, 10, 11, 18 ; of learn- 
ing, 31 ; for home teaching, 
102 ; of steady health are ig- 
nored, 160 ; of steady health are 
principles of choice, 163 ; to 
maintain health are four, 201 ; 
to avoid sickness are four, 201. 

Examinations, pedagogic theory 
of, 84. 

Excuses, feeble things, 157. 

Exercise, in babyhood, 101. 

Experience, as opposed to condi- 
tion, 188-190. 

Experts, have reiterated experi- 
ence, 3; employed by par- 
ents, 4 ; as teachers, 6 ; are 
outsiders, 7 ; may be trusted, 
8 ; steal privileges of parents, 
12 ; mistaken thoroughness of, 
28. 

Explanation, maxim of, 144. 

Fallow (Lying), pedagogic theory 
of, 68. 

Fear, never to be used in disci- 
pline, 150. 

Forbidding, maxim of, 144. 

Force, maxim of, 137. 

Foreigners, as teachers, pedagogic 
theory of, 74. 



Geography, home teaching of, 97. 
Guidance, maxim of, 137. 

Habits, maxim of, 150. 

Happiness, children have a right 
to, 168; of unhampered child- 
hood, 173 ; of maturity, impor- 
tant, 174 ; factitious, 185. 

Health, pleasures injurious to, 
ISO; requires four tilings, 201. 

History, home teaching of, 97. 

Home, inadequate, 14 ; place for 
adjustment, 15 ; not suited for 
mental training, 16-17 ; being 
encroached on by school, 18- 
20; should create the school, 
20 ; opportunity and training, 
38 ; should supplement school 
work, 48-51 ; schooling, peda- 
gogic theory of, 70 ; teaching 
unsystematic, 102 ; dances, 193; 
secures good health, 201. 

Humor, maxim of, 134. 

Hurry, maxim of, 135. 

Ignoring, maxim of, 156. 

Independence (see Efficiency, Self- 
dependence), an obstacle to dis- 
cipline, 119-122 ; overcome by 
affection, etc., 120. 

Infancy (see Adolescence, Baby- 
hood, Tutelage), teachers of, 24; 
tasks of, 24; "prolonged," 37, 
172. 

Instruction (see Teaching). 

Intellect (?ee Mind), what it is, 
58 ; use of, in thought, 59. 

Judgment, necessary to moral 
sense, 117; separate from de- 



216 



INDEX 



sire, 117 ; based on experience, 
117 ; must be appealed to, 118 ; 
moral, 128 ; miust be formed, 
128 ; appealed to by explanation, 
140 ; encouraged, 145 ; of others 
learned slowly, 152 ; unsuitable 
for cbildren, 154. 

Keeping Pace, maxim of, 155. 

Kindergarten, pedagogic theory 
of, 70. 

Knowledge, contrasted with cul- 
ture and efficiency, 11, 12, 13, 
14 ; not necessarily gained at 
school, 14 ; has an acquired air, 
19 ; repetition of, necessary, 47 ; 
suited to childhood, 47. 

Laboratory (see Method). 

Languages, home-teaching of, 
96. 

Learning, outline of, would be 
useful, 39 ; outline of, would in- 
clude, etc., 40 ; manner of, is 
all-important, 54 ; pedagogic 
theory of early, 69 ; the little 
child's way of, 92. 

Literature, English, home teaching 
of, 93. 

Lying, maxim of, 148. 

Malice, maxim of, 158. 

Maxims of Discipline, 138 ; outline 

of, 159. 
Memory, what it is, 57. 
Method, laboratory, pedagogic 

theory of, 73. 
Mind (see Intellect), what it is, 

58 ; use of, in thought, 59 ; slow 

to move, 122, 141; to be guided, 



135 ; dwarfed by unchildish 
pleasure, 179. 

Mood, maxim of, 158. 

Moral, as distinguished from men- 
tal, 60; purpose, 114, 132; 
sense, 117 ; training comes from 
example, 126 ; considerations 
objective, 127 ; judgment, 132 ; 
all injunctions become, 156 ; 
pleasures injurious to morals, 
182. 

Mother (see Parents), her idea of 
her child's life, 22 ; thinks she 
cannot teach, 90 ; can make all 
a child's beginnings, 91 ; teaches 
by sharing interests, 101; guards 
health, 201. 

Motives (see Aims), for education, 
13 ; for study, 16 ; of good 
school, 18; suitable to childhood, 
32 ; suitable to youth, 35 ; suit- 
able to home training, 38 ; for 
early learning, 43 ; for vacation 
study, 4.3 ; for tasks, 44 ; social, 
116 ; maxim of base, 146 ; for 
keeping Sunday, 194 ; for regu- 
lating amusements, 196. 

Nagging, maxim of, 146. 

Natural, necessity, 161 ; condition, 
161. 

Nerves, increase in diseases of, 
160 ; were adjusted to civiliza- 
tion, 161 ; weak, 162 ; become 
more responsive, 171 ; respon- 
sibility for weakness of, 176; 
cause of, weakness in children, 
176; need wholesome youth, 
182 ; specially excitable in girls, 
185 ; injured by congeBtion, 190 j 



INDEX 



217 



injured by stagnation, 191 
broken, injure judgment, 196 
sound, make sound life, 197 
sapped by ill health, 200. 

Obedience, reluctance to, 122; 
maxim of, 141 ; foundation of 
faith, 143 ; replaced by unself- 
ishness, etc., 143 ; Americans 
chary in teaching of, 164. 

Once, is enough, 62, 189. 

Parents (see Mother), not experts, 
3 ; dependent on experts, anec- 
dotes, 4; ignorant about educa- 
tion, 6 ; a wisdom of, 7 ; inside 
interest of parents, 8 ; educa- 
tional knowledge necessary to, 
8 ; guard against encroachments 
of school, 15, 21 ; perhaps indif- 
ferent and ignorant, 20 ; should 
select child's reading, 112 ; often 
imjust and stupid, 126 ; who do 
not learn from experience, 164 ; 
mislead children, 168 ; can se- 
cure children's happiness, 173; 
under-regulate, 176 ; must be re- 
sponsible, 179; permit stagna- 
tion, 195 ; make the childhood, 
196 ; need a clear vision, 196. 

Perfection (see Completeness), 
unnecessary in babyhood, 25 ; 
impossible, 26, 45 ; irrelevant, 
28 ; possible in childhood, 31 ; 
aims beyond, 35 ; love of, is uni- 
versal, 136 ; counsels of, 148. 

Personal inducements, not to be 
used in school, 15-16. 

Persuasion, maxim of, 144. 

Powers, balanced, a purpose of 



training, 10 ; using, is a pleasure, 
32 ; balanced, a final purpose, 
42 ; mental, chiefly concern the 
school, 56 ; list of mental, 57 ; 
desire not a mental power, 57 ; 
aimed at by schooling, 61 ; spe- 
cial, of babyhood, 92 ; constantly 
appearing, 155 ; well-used, can 
be set aside, 155. 

Practice and Precept, maxim of, 
156. 

Proportion (see Balance), we lack 
a sense of, 28 ; not established 
in occupations, 163 ; powers 
should be used in, 175 ; sense 
of, 179; gratifying powers in, 
195. 

Punishment, maxim of, 138 ; sub- 
stitutes for, 140. 

Racial Recapitulation, pedagogic 
theory of, 71 ; in mental devel- 
opment, 72 ; in moral ideas, 
129. 

Reading, learning, by special 
method, 69 ; pedagogic theory 
of learning, in babyhood, 93; 
home teaching of, 93 ; is process 
of vicarious experience, 106 ; for 
a little child, 107 ; for older chil- 
dren, 108 ; for youth, 108 ; un- 
desirable kinds of, 109 ; first- 
rate, is safe, 110 ; must not be 
too simple, 111 ; emulative. 111 ; 
of magazines and newspapers, 
112 ; school editions, 112 ; ear- 
lier classics, 114 ; different for 
boys and girls, 114 ; much, 115. 

Repentance, not the cause of ex- 
cuses, 157 ; is of three kinds, 158. 



218 



INDEX 



Results, of sensible distribution of 
studies, etc., 49. 

Rewards, maxim of, 14*7. 

Rules, universal, of conduct, 133 ; 
general, of conduct, 138 ; of per- 
fection, 148. 

School (see Schooling-), a conven- 
ience, 23 ; tabulation of child's 
life, 23 ; wastes time, 45 ; can- 
not do all the schooling, 51 ; 
should train mental powers, 56 ; 
public, pedagogic theory of, 77 ; 
boarding, pedagogic theory of, 
82 ; is seldom soothing, 176 ; 
dancing, 192; supplemented by 
vacation, 193. 

Schooling (see School), question of, 
perplexingto parents,6; methods 
not the parent's affair, 8; must 
foster thoroughness and self- 
reliance, 8 ; three points of good, 
9 ; should be formal and sys- 
tematic, 14 ; should not be like 
home, 15 ; represents necessity, 
duty, and justice, 15 ; should be 
enjoyed, 17 ; is necessary, 17 ; 
not synonymous with education, 
18 ; recently overemphasized, 19 ; 
only a part of education, 24 ; 
dominated by simplicity, thor- 
oughness, and serenity, 24 ; 
should supplement home, 38 ; 
exists to provide mental training, 
46; aims at self -use and balanced 
powers, 61 ; home, pedagogic 
theory of, 76. 

Science, home teaching of, 98. 

Self-aware, child should become, 
152. 



Self -consciousness, maxim of, 151. 

Self - dependence (see Self-reli- 
ance, Efficiency, Independence, 
Self -use), of primary impor- 
tance, 10 ; injured by elabo- 
rate teaching, 19; in amusements, 
188. 

Self-government, aim of discipline, 
116, 129. 

Self-reliance, must be fostered by 
school, 8 ; a purpose of training, 
10 ; should be habitual, 64. 

Self -use, a purpose of training, 10 ; 
a final purpose, 42 ; aim of 
schooling, 61. 

Sensation, is not thought, 59; is 
important to thought, 60. 

Serenity, an essential of adequate 
training, 10 ; necessary at school, 
24. 

Silence, maxim of, 145. 

Simplicity, an essential of ade- 
quate training, 10 ; necessary at 
school, 24; especially charac- 
teristic of babyhood, 25 ; ex- 
ceedingly necessary to child- 
hood, 28. 

Snubbing, maxim of, 146. 

Socializing, a child, 178. 

Specialists (see Experts). 

Stages, of development, 169-173. 

Standard, of performance should 
be high, 63 ; of performance for 
a child, 103; of performance, 
maxim of, 136. 

Stimulus, such as is desirable for 
childhood, 32 ; undesirable if 
artificial, 33 ; such as is desir- 
able for youth, 35. 

Subconscious area, is large, 63. 



INDEX 



219 



Subjective view of naughtiness, 
etc., 127. 

Talents, must be fostered, 42. 

Tastes, must be gratified, 42. 

Teacher, responsible for methods, 
8 ; must have wholesome qual- 
ity, 10 ; must not appeal to per- 
sonal affection, 16 ; must depend 
on influences beyond himself, 
16 ; must not superimpose him- 
self, 32. 

Teaching, may be overdone, 27- 
32 ; methods of, good for sug- 
gestion, 29; should produce 
eagerness, independence, accu- 
racy, modesty, 30 ; is by guid- 
ance, not conveyance, 62; for 
babyhood, 89, — (arithmetic, 95 
art, 98 ; English literature, 93 
exercise, 101 ; geography, 97 
history, 97 ; language, 96 ; read- 
ing, 93 ; science, 98 ; writing, 95. ) 

Technical training, not necessary 
to education, 29. 

Temperament, the controlling fac- 
tor, 42 ; must be used, etc., 42 ; 
obstacle to discipline, 123. 

Theories, educational, often un- 
tenable, always based on some 
fact, 66; pedagogic, 66, — (ado- 
lescence, influence of, 76 ; be- 
ginning early, 69 ; boarding 
schools, 82 ; coeducation, 80 ; 
culture studies, 75 ; early learn- 
ing, 69 ; enjoying school, 71 ; 
examinations, 84; fallow, ly- 
ing, 68 ; foreigners as teach- 
ers, 74; home schooling, 76; 
in general, 84; kindergarten. 



70 ; laboratory methods, 73 ; 
learning to read, 69 ; lying fal- 
low, 68 ; manual training, 72 ; 
natural development, 68; pub- 
lic schools, 77 ; racial recapitu- 
lation, 71 ; read, learning to, 69.) 

Thoroughness, must be fostered by 
school, 8 ; an essential in ade- 
quate training, 10 ; necessary at 
school, 24 ; of specialists, mis- 
leading, 28. 

Thought, what it is, 58 ; is not 
sensation, 59 ; is meagre with- 
out knowledge, 104. 

Threats, maxim of, 146. 

Time, distribution of, among sorts 
of occupations, 51. 

Training (see Technical), essen- 
tials of, 10 ; powers acted on 
by, 10 ; means employed in, 11 ; 
results of, 11 ; must aim at effi- 
ciency, 12, 13, 14 ; mental, a 
modern discovery, 17 ; too self- 
conscious and elaborate, 19, 20 ; 
if good leaves four marks, 64 ; 
manual, pedagogic theory of, 
72. 

Tricks, often transient, 123 ; not 
moral faults, 123 ; sometimes 
need punishment, 139; some- 
times need rewards, 147. 

Trust, maxim of, 1.35. 

Truth, hard to discern, 149. 

Tutelage (see Infancy), wiser 
treatment in, 38 ; not too long 
for preparation, 39. 

Vacation, must not be empty, 43 ; 
should supplement school work, 
48 ; must not be stagnant, 193. 



220 



INDEX 



Will, what it is, 57 ; injured by 
unchildisli pleasure, 179. 

Words, use of, important form 
of education, 46 ; not always 
understood by child, 127, 149 ; 
soon become cant, 156 ; stop in 
memory, 157. 

Work, independent, for children, 
27 ; interest in, should be quiet, 
32 ; should be steady, not stimu- 
lated, 33 ,* must be earnest, 



34 ; easy at youth's outset, 34 ; 
joy in, 36 ; should not be con- 
stant, 103 ; customary for baby, 
104. 
Writing, home teaching of, 95. 

Youth, complex characteristics of, 
35 ; schooling for, 35 ; interests 
suitable to, 35 ; as a stage of 
development, 170 ; injured by 
unlit pleasures, 177. 



®5e tfiitoerjsitie ^xe0 

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ROUTINE AND IDEALS 

By Le Baron R. Briggs, President of Rad- 
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THE COLLEGE MAN and 
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